The Thoughtful SEO’s manifesto

For many people, a manifesto is something to think about. For some people it defines a way of life. For a very few people it may become an object to be feared, disputed, and opposed. Like art, a good manifesto evokes some sort of reaction in people. You need to shape your own manifesto if you want to know who is paying attention to you.

• When you create a Web site, build a site you want to read and use. If it’s not useful to you, it’s not worth creating.
• Instead of thinking about where you can get links, ask yourself how you can make your linking more useful to others.
• Dropping links in forums tells other people you don’t know enough about search engine optimization to be doing it. Using software to drop links in forums tells other people you don’t care how much you fail at search engine optimization.
• If you’re going to create content in volume, create it to last. Which would you prefer: to make $1000 in a month or $12,000 per year?
• If you think you need more links, the first thing you should do is create the content that provides those links. The second thing you should do is force yourself to NOT tell people how you got your links.
• If you’re using Yahoo! Site Explorer to do link research you’re telling people you don’t know enough about search engine optimization to do link research. If you install an SEO toolbar in your Mozilla browser to check Yahoo! links for you, you’re telling people you’re too lazy to learn how to do link research right.
• There is nothing wrong with snapshot SEO analysis unless that is the only kind or the majority of analysis you do.
• There is nothing wrong with creating large volumes of content as long as it’s unique, informative, and useful.
• Blackhat spammers burn out the usefulness of about 10% of all SEO tips, tricks, and techniques that are openly or semi-openly shared on blogs and forums in about 12 months. White hat SEOs, newbies, and SEO gurus burn out the other 90% in 6 months or less.
• It takes about 2 years for a very useful aspect of search engine optimization theory to become accepted by mainstream SEOs and their followings.
• Keywords in domain names don’t matter. Keywords in URLs do.
• Every time an SEO community leader tells you to ignore the keywrods meta tag, just ignore them and go back to adding relevant content that Ask and Yahoo! still index to your pages until Ask and Yahoo! stop indexing the keywords meta tag.
• PageRank doesn’t have anything to do with relevance. Google uses PageRank to decide which pages will be displayed as the most relevant to a query regardless of where the most relevant pages actually are to be found.
• “Aged domain” has joined the list of ambiguous SEO expressions like “relevant link”, “authority site”, and “SEO friendly” that mean nothing and provide no value to a discussion.
• If you believe firmly that the age of a Web site or domain can matter, how do you explain why it matters to yourself? If you cannot offer yourself a rationale, who else do you think will believe you?
• I did not say that aged domains don’t matter.
• If all you had to work with was links and content, what would you do with your search engine optimization?
• If you want to buy an aged domain, are you hoping to leverage existing link value? Are you buying that domain on a blog or forum used by blackhat spammers who milk every domain for as much as they can get from it? Do you look at the domain as a fixer-upper with potential long-term brand value? Are you ready to invest more time and money into building value in that aged domain than you feel would be required for a previously unused domain?
• The real value of an aged domain lies in its future, not its past.
• Every link counts in your backlink analysis, but not every link counts in search engine results.
• You cannot determine which links count for search engines, but you can decide which links matter to you.
• You build linking pages, you find linking partners, you use linking resources. If you blur the distinctions for yourself, don’t be surprised if other people get confused too.
• Anyone who says that search engine optimization is all about links doesn’t know enough about search engine optimization to be talking about it.

This isn’t link bait. I just needed a little time to collect my thoughts so I could get on with my day. Thank you for indulging me.