SEO Strategies
The 10 Commandments of a Successful SEO Program
Part I - Commandments 1-5 by Serge Thibodeau
Feb 25, 2004
Editor's note: Check back soon for Part II of this report.
Even if Google has been tweaking and fine tuning its search engine algorithms almost daily since it started last November, one thing remains constant: there are things in SEO that you need to do and others that you absolutely need to avoid.
Here are my 10 commandments of rigorous SEO techniques that I practice. As fast and furious as Google “dances” have been lately, these 10 commandments have, to this day, kept my clients out of trouble while helping them to continue enjoying priority rankings in the results pages.
I strongly believe that if you practice “safe SEO” such as the ones described in these 10 commandments, then you should get equally positive results.
SEO Commandment Number One
Thou shalt not write invisible text
It continues to surprise me that some people are still trying to get away with this! Just last week, we had to clean up a mess that somebody else did who had inserted lots of invisible text on most of the pages in that site. As a result, and as might be expected, the site got banned by Google. We had to remove it, properly optimize the site for its main keywords, utilize Wordtracker and resubmit to Google and the other search engines.
Just to be certain, I also wrote an email to Google advising them of the clean up we conducted, with a thank you note for their consideration in reinstating the site back into their index.
SEO Commandment Number Two
Thou shalt always use Wordtracker
If you are really serious about getting your site higher in the rankings, don’t waste your time with tools that aren’t accurate enough. The only serious tool by today’s standards in the SEO industry is Wordtracker. Optimize a site with the wrong keywords and you will end up with a site that ranks high, but for products or services your company may not even sell! Correctly identifying your “right” keywords and search terms using Wordtracker is the ONLY way you will be successful at targeting your real audience, and your real prospects.
SEO Commandment Number Three
Thou shalt continually add new content
It’s a known and proven fact. I see it everyday. Sites that continually add new content and new pages every day ultimately get the best rankings all the time. What’s more, when search engine spiders visit your site and find newly added or updated content, they will come and visit you more often! The more often they come, usually the higher and better your rankings. Always remember the search engines are always on the lookout for fresh new “meat.” Surprise them everyday with new content and watch your rankings go higher.
Also, and this is a very well kept secret in the SEO industry: With all else being equal, the greater the number of pages in a given website, the higher the PR (PageRank). This is a mathematical formula. In combination with the number of links pointing to your site, Google’s PageRank algorithm uses the number of actual pages in a given site to calculate its final PR value. This is performed once a month during every major Google dance. Contact me if you need to know more about it.
SEO Commandment Number Four
Thou shalt never link to bad neighborhoods
You can’t control who links to you, and, for the most part, no search engine will ever penalize your site if someone links to you, since they know you have no control over it. But you do have control of the sites YOU link to. If you happen to link to a site which some would call a “bad neighbourhood,” you might get penalized by some engines for linking to them. Examples of this would be sites that have been penalized in the past (or still are) for prohibited techniques such as invisible text, invisible links, gateway (or doorway pages) or, in some cases, sites that are really nothing more than a bunch of affiliates sites that are heavily cross linked.
If you feel suspicious before linking to a site, it would help to make a few investigations on your own. Make a search of who’s linking to them. Are they penalized too? I like to think it is “Linker Beware,” and proceed cautiously before you do, just to keep safe.
SEO Commandment Number Five
Thou shalt not spam the meta tags
It’s a known fact that most search engines today don’t even care to look at meta tags anymore, since they were spammed and abused so much in the past. The only search engine today that places some importance on meta tags is Inktomi. Since Yahoo! is about to drop Google’s search results any day now, it will exclusively use their own search results produced by their own search property, Inktomi. If you decide to write your meta tags, just write your main keywords that are on that particular page. If the page is about blue and red widgets, then that is all that should be written in the meta tags. Don’t “stuff” them with useless words that have nothing to do with the actual text written on that page.