An SEO contest is a prize-awarding movement which challenges search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners to get high ranking under main search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN using certain keyword. This type of competition is controversial because it often leads to huge amounts of link spamming as participants try to boost the rankings of their pages by any resources available.
The organizing body of an SEO competition may hold the activity without promotion of a product or service in mind; or they may organize a contest in order to market something on the Internet. Participants can showcase their skills and potentially discover and share new techniques for promoting websites.