There is currently a SEO competition going on in an online academy that teaches its students how to make money online.
There is a class for beginners and one for advanced students to keep the competition fair.
The contest will give all the participants a chance to use their new SEO methods in a real life scenario. Each group has a different target term they are competing to rank for.
The advanced group will be competing for the phrase Dirty Blue Widgets and the beginners will be running for Clean Red Widgets.
These are both nonsensical terms to avoid outside competition. This allows all the students to compete against each other in stead of the rest of the WWW and thus gives them an equal opportunity to win.
It runs from 11/10/08 until 2/10/09 and the winner will be the person in the lead at the end of the run. There are a couple guidelines though.
There are no illegal techniques allowed in the contest. Any site competing must not contain any words from the targeted phrase in the domain. No automated tools can be used except those that submit to article directories or social bookmarking sites.
The prize for the first place winner is $1000 for the beginner contest and $1500 for the advanced contest.