I generally steer clear of awards because they seem a bit gratuitous and self serving, but they are great for link building.

Loren recently created a 2005 search awards contest. The awards have been mentioned on most every major search blog and have even got a bit of coverage outside the typical search sphere.

When Loren did his recent contest he ran it past me first and I said that he should re-categorize some of the stuff and add at least one category that could go viral or would be inclined to be talked about.

The category which fit that profile well for me is

Matt or Jeremy: who is more likely to flame you for spamming?

Sure enough both Matt and Jeremy blogged about it.

I have never done a contest to build links, but if I did here are things I would think about

• which people should I run the award ideas past before it exists so I can refine it? This could help improve the contest categories, and it gives those people a reason for them to want to help market it since they gave feedback on it. Plus asking for feedback is a bit more tactful than asking for a link.

• Are there any official sounding endorsements that would make the contest seem official like?
• Who do I REALLY want links from? Those sites should be listed in small categories that really fit there niche?
• Will any of the contestants get pissed if I email them to tell them they are in the contest? If not which contestants should I email?
• Can I make something funny or interesting that people would want to link at?
• Outside of the problem of self selection can I get a consensus on something that generally has no consensus?
• Can I relate this study to bloggers or any niche markets that typically link virally or link with authority?

There are probably a bunch of other good ideas with contests, please let me know which ones you like.

In many ways a link in and of itself may not constitute a vote of quality. How do you discount sites like FT selling hidden links or links that are out of the way ads?

Brian thinks search engines may use clickstream data.

Throwing out the book on SEO is another post covering site visitor action, and the concept has to be at least a bit valid because Rand's recent beginner's guide to SEO already ranks in the top 30 for SEO. If you look at Rand's link trend or Del.icio.us information you can see that he has had a sharp increase in viral linking and SVA recently.

Peter D recently posted on finding relevancy in hyper saturated markets. The solution to the problem?

• buy old

• go viral
• do both

So New Years is just around the corner. Many people will act in predictible ways, saying that this year they want to do this or that. Odds are there are some good linking opportunities pent up in that demand. This page currently ranks #7 in Google for lose weight.

I recently interviewed Greg from BOTW. He chats about directories, blackjack, and running some of his other web based businesses.

He also offers a discount for BOTW submissions at the end of the interview.

Steve Rubel posted about The Guardian launching a feed reader.

Many sites that are hard to link at or are in fields where many people are competing on near similar content theme and quality may be able to boost their overall site authority scores by creating something that people with lots of link popularity would like to link at.