Marketing Pilgrim

The best things in life are three!

No, that’s not a typo. We’re excited to announced the return of the annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest–this being contest number three!

If you’re not familiar with the annual contest, here’s the elevator pitch:

** We want to help find the brightest minds in search and social media, so each year, we ask you to submit your very best “how to” article on the topic of SEO, PPC, or social media. Over a 4 week period we tally the traffic count and send the top 5 most visited entries to our panel of expert judges. They pick their favorite, and the winner helps themselves to a prize package worth over $10,000! **

New Bonus System!

As always, we’ve listened to your feedback. So, this year, we’re adding a new twist–two ways to boost your chances of winning.

Bonus 1: If an entry achieves an average “Bounce Rate” below 75% it will be awarded a bonus equal to 10% of its total “unique views.”
Bonus 2: If an entry achieves an average “Time on Page” greater than 2:00 minutes, it will be awarded a bonus equal to 10% of its total “unique views.”

Example: Total Unique Views = 1,000
Bounce Rate of 55% = 1000 x 10% bonus (100)
Time on Page is 2:30 minutes = 1000 x 10% bonus (100)
Overall Traffic = 1,200

While there’s nothing in the rules to stop you from flooding your entry with quick traffic, we wanted to reward those entries that do truly appeal to our readers.

How to Enter

You can view full entry details and deadlines at the SEM Scholarship Contest page, but here are the most important details.

1. Your deadline for entry is May 23rd.
2. Your entry must be previously unpublished and a minimum of 400 words.
3. Qualifying entries will be published between May 28th and May 30th.
4. The five entries with the most traffic over a four week period, will qualify as a finalist.
5. Our judges will vote for the favorite and the grand prize winner will be announced July 7th.

If you have the talent to help others learn about search and social media, this is your opportunity to step into the limelight. Every published entry will include your name and a link to your web site!

Superstar Judging Panel

Make it as one of our five finalists and you’ll get the chance to garner the attention of these industry superstars:

Lisa Barone – BruceClay.com
Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
Christine Churchill – KeyRelevance.com
Bryan Eisenberg – FutureNowInc.com
Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org
Todd Friesen – VisibileTechnologies.com
Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
Avinash Kaushik – Kaushik.net
Jennifer Laycock – SearchEngineGuide.com
Todd Malicoat – Stuntdubl.com
Boris Mordkovich – SearchMarketingStandard.com
Lee Odden – TopRankMarketing.com
Neil Patel – PronetAdvertising.com
Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
Stephen Spencer – Netconcepts.com
Brett Tabke – WebmasterWorld.com
Aaron Wall – SEOBook.com
Tamar Weinberg – Techipedia.com
Jill Whalen – HighRankings.com

Impress the judges and you could walk away with a valuable selection of prizes!

Any questions–after you’ve read the full contest details here–just leave a comment below.

Thanks and good luck!

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