Engineering structures consist of various components, and the components interact with each other through contact. Engineers tend to consider the interaction in analysis and design. Interactions of the components have nonlinearity because of the friction force and boundary conditions. Nonlinear analysis has been developed to accommodate the contact condition. However, structural optimization using nonlinear analysis is fairly expensive, and sensitivity information is difficult to calculate. Therefore, an efficient optimization method using nonlinear analysis is needed to consider the contact condition in design. Nonlinear Response Optimization using Equivalent Loads (NROEL) has been proposed for nonlinear response structural optimization. The method was originally developed for optimization problems considering geometric/material nonlinearities. The method is modified to consider the contact nonlinearity in this research. Equivalent loads are defined as the loads for linear analysis, which generate the same response field as that of nonlinear analysis. A nonlinear response optimization problem is converted to linear response optimization with equivalent loads. The modified NROEL is verified through three examples with contact conditions. Three structural examples using the finite element method are demonstrated. They are shape optimization with stress constraints, size optimization with stress/displacement constraints and topology optimization. Reasonable results are obtained in the optimization process.