Hennepin Tech SEO Contest

I teach a class in web design and production at Hennepin Technical College, and part of my class is a semester-long exercise in search engine optimization (SEO). I know there are some professionals who specialize strictly in SEO as their line of expertise, but an argument I make to my students is that every web professional should be directly involved in and actively doing SEO. Designers, developers, content strategists, writers, and quality assurance testers should all understand SEO to the point where it’s part of every aspect of web production. “Search Engine Optimzer” or “SEO Specialist” should not be a job title, it should be a line item on your list of skills as a web professional.

Each semester, I hold an SEO contest in my class. The point is simple. On the first day of class, I find a search term that returns zero results in Google. This year that term is “hydropackulicity,” an utterly meaningless term. The students have 16 weeks to launch a website and optimize it for that term. On the last day of class I do a search for that term, and the owner of the website that comes up first in Google’s natural search results wins the grand prize!

Here are some websites that have already hit the interwebs:

• hydropackulicity.info by Philip Shields
• hydropackulicity.blogspot.com by Dhila Backstrom
• hydropackulicity-challenge.com by Gina Reed
• Hydropackulicity – Geeky Gangster by Kou Yang
• hydropackulicity.sarahjohnsondesigns.com by Sarah Johnson
• hydropackulicity.tumblr.com by Kathlea Almoite
• hydropackulicity.wordpress.com by Carol Prom
• facebook.com/Hydropackulicity.AbbyRich by Abby Rich
• hydropackuli-city.com by Gary Lutgen