Enter Our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest

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!

How’s that excitement level?

We’ve just kicked off our 4th Annual Search Engine Marketing Scholarship Contest? Four years! Four years of helping the brightest search engine marketers find the spotlight they rightly deserve!

Wait until you see the prizes we’ve already lined up for the winner!

$10,000+ Grand Prize Package:

• All Access Pass to SMX East
• All Access Pass to Pubcon
• Twelve months of Enterprise reputation monitoring from Trackur.com
• Free seat to Jill Whalen’s High Rankings SEO Training Classes.
• Enrollment in a “Certified Search Engine Marketer Pathway” course at SearchEngineCollege.com.
• A professional press release–highlighting the winner’s article and expertise–from TopRank Online Marketing.
• Six months premium membership to SEOmoz.org.
• Six months premium membership to SearchEngineLand.com
• A one year subscription to the SEO project management site, SoloSEO.com.
• One year subscription (ten user license) to blog post management system RustyBudget.
• Complimentary Conversions and Basic Usability Web Site Review valued at $300 from UsabilityEffect.com/Cre8pc.
• An autographed copy of Andy Beal’s book Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.
• More prizes to be announced.

Not only will your article get the attention of Marketing Pilgrim’s thousands of daily readers, but, each of our five finalists will gain the right to be reviewed by the following search marketing rock stars!

Rock Star Judges:

• Danny Sullivan – SearchEngineLand.com
• Rand Fishkin – SEOmoz.org
• Jill Whalen – HighRankings.com
• Lee Odden – TopRankMarketing.com
• Michael Gray – Wolf-Howl.com
• Mona Elesseily – PageZero.com
• Barry Schwartz – RustyBrick.com
• Kalena Jordan – SearchEngineCollege.com
• Michael Jensen – SoloSEO.com
• Linda Bustos (our 2008 winner) – Elasticpath.com
• Joseph Morin – Storybids.com
• Todd Friesen – PositionTech.com
• Kim Krause Berg – UsabilityEffect.com
• More judges to be confirmed

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 6pm (eastern) June 22nd.
2. Your entry must be previously unpublished and a minimum of 400 words.
3. Qualifying entries will be published between June 24 and June 26.
4. The five entries with the most traffic over a four week period (including bonuses), will qualify as a finalist.
5. Our judges will vote for their favorite and the grand prize winner will be announced August 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!

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

Thanks and good luck!