Posted by randfish

Bryan Eisenberg pinged me this week and asked if SEOmoz would participate in their latest contest - "My Hyperlink Can Beat Your HyperLink." It's not just fun, it's participatory, engaging, and incredibly valuable - both from a learning perspective and for the winner. Here are the details:

• Just comment on this post or the ones like it at Copyblogger and Grokdotcom (coming soon), linking us to the landing page you want tested and telling us why you should win.
• Judges Brian Clark, Rand Fishkin & Bryan Eisenberg will choose 5 winners.
• To be eligible, contestants must have clear metrics and analytics in place, the ability to test (Google Website Optimizer is free, so no excuses), and the willingness to implement our suggestions.
• Contestants must have enough traffic to yield valid test results.
• For each of our winners, the judges will select a single link to be tested, then agree on three variations of that call to action (a.k.a., anchor link).

I think Bryan and the FutureNow crew are a bit frustrated by the research from MarketingSherpa study showing that "click here" was the most effective anchor text for inducing a click-through. (Off topic - If the web were to revert to a "click here" based link structure, it certainly would have an interesting impact on how the engines interpret anchor text). Their experience suggests that there may be much better text to use when requesting a click, and it should be terrific to see how their testing works out.

So - in the comments on this post, link to your landing page of choice and Bryan, Brian and I will review them, choose a few and we'll watch as the Eisenberg's work their magic and educate us all in the process.

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