20 More Hard Core SEO Tips

Last year’s article on hard core SEO tips proved to be the most popular article on SEO Theory. It still receives a respectable amount of traffic. I was stuck for a topic that morning and decided to challenge people’s preconceptions about search engine optimization.

All year long I’ve thought to myself, “I wish I could do THAT again”. Well, I can’t promise you’ll have as much fun with these tips as with last year, but they do represent a year’s reflection on the lessons we can learn from challenging the ideas that have become so strongly fixed in the collective SEO wisdom.

20 More Hard Core SEO Tips – The List

1. Create a Web site with unscannable copy and get each page to rank for at least 2 expressions.
2. Create a Web site without using targeted keywords in your copy and get each page to rank for at least 2 expressions.
3. Create a web site using tables for page layout, ensuring that the text is linearized, and get each page to rank for at least two expressions.
4. Inspire 5 other sites to link to a press release WITHOUT using a press release distribution service AND without asking for links.
5. Compare your server log referrals for Yahoo! and Microsoft Search to your Google Analytics referral data for those search services.
6. Create a splash/intro page. Use only Flash or only an image (no embeds) and promote it to the top of four (4) competitive queries.
7. Obtain 10 FREE 1-way, value-passing links from separate domains that you don’t own for a single site in one hour without using link dropping scripts, forum signatures or posts, blog comments, or social media sites.
8. Reverse the polarity of your Web site. If it’s mostly graphics, make it mostly text. If it’s mostly text, make it mostly graphics. If it’s mostly user-generated content, make it mostly your own unique, coherent, original content. If it’s not mostly UGC, make it mostly UGC.
9. Create a schmuck list. Add to it every time you come across someone who posts self-promotional comments on blogs, forums, or social media sites; every time you read a blog post from someone who equates blogs with social media; every time you come across someone who says links are the most important part of SEO; every time you see someone attribute TrustRank to Google. Add yourself to the list each time you agree with the schmucks until you learn to stop being a schmuck.
10. Find 3 active SEO forums where people don’t talk about Google PageRank updates.
11. Write down your 10 best previously unshared SEO tips, tricks, techniques, or tactics. Lock the list away and never share it on the Web or at a conference.
12. Register a domain. Write a humorous essay on how to brush your teeth, or how to wash your car, or how you felt the first day of school. Put the essay on the domain. Forget about the site.
13. Create a Web site in a language you’ve never used before. Get the Web site indexed in appropriate search engines. Get the site to rank for at least 2 expressions.
14. Write an essay or tutorial on SEO. Do not discuss on-page factors, links, or social media.
15. Ask 3 kids aged 7-10 what their favorite sites are and why they like those sites. Ask 3 kids aged 25-30 what their favorite sites are and why. Find 3 points in common between the 2 groups.
16. Design a new navigation system for your Web site. Install it without removing the old navigation system.
17. Create a forum signature that links to one of your competitors’ sites in a flattering, sincere way.
18. Find 10 obscure, well-written Web sites that are NOT blogs and which contain thoughtful articles that interest. Send an email to each site owner that sincerely compliments their site 5 times. Use 250 words or less. Do not mention your own site or explain what you do.
19. Create a 10-doorway page site. Get the pages to rank in Google without invoking a penalty or filter.
20. Pick an expression no one searches for. Within 6 months, generate at least 100 natural queries for that expression.

20 More Hard Core SEO Tips – The Explanations

Professional search engine optimization keeps moving forward. If you don’t continue to challenge yourself, you stagnate. And people who stagnate in this industry are uncompetitive.

Create a site with unscannable copy. Why? Because most Web content is not scannable. Because most Web news copy is not scannable. “Write for the Web” is a non-sensical expression. You write for people, not the Web, and people will read anything that is well-written and engaging. People will stop and read anything that captures their interest. They’ll leave anything that bores them. Making your copy scannable doesn’t make it less boring.

Create a site without targeting keywords. Put yourself in everyone else’s shoes. You were once there. Create a site about a topic and focus on the topic. Toss out all your SEO knowledge and skill. Once you find out what the pages naturally attract search referrals for, optimize for those referral expressions. Let go of your preconceptions about what you SHOULD be doing and learn to respond to what people are searching for.

Create a site using tables for page layout. One of the dumbest ideas ever passed around the SEO community was that it’s easier to design search-friendly content with CSS/DIVs than with tables. If you don’t know how to make a clean page design using tables, you don’t know enough about tables to form an opinion on their use in Web design. Tables were originally used for page layout, and CSS1 was NOT intended for page layout. Search optimizers need to know how to optimize page designs without acting like illiterate code snobs.

Inspire 5 other sites to link to a press release. SEOs like to use press releases and it shows: SEO press releases tend to be ugly, unimaginative, and brutally distributed across as many Web PR services as possible. If you can create an elegant, attractive, and interesting press release, you’ll get more visbility and traffic than from the cookie-cutter model the SEO community loves.

Compare server log referrals to Google Analytics. Once you’ve seen just how much information Google Analytics fails to report to you, you’ll wonder why you ever liked it in the first place. Google does not seem to know what search referrals from other engines look like. But YOU need to know what they look like.

Create a splash/intro page. I love these pages. SEOs shake in their boots, roll their eyes, and get out their floppy-eared SEO tutorials when they run into splash pages. Piffle. Learn how to optimize for anything and you’ll quit rolling your eyes needlessly. You should be able to optimize any Flash-only site in your sleep.

Obtain 10 free links. I worded this as carefully as I could, so as to rule out all the cheap tricks SEOs tend to rely upon. Resourceful SEOs can get those links quickly. How resourceful are you?

Reverse the polarity of your Web site. SciFi reference included for Todd Friesen’s eye-rolling enjoyment. However, as an SEO technician you need to be able to optimize any kind of content. The content style you favor is the one you least need to practice optimizing.

Create a schmuck list. You’ll never get out ahead of the crowd if you keep agreeing with all their mediocre ideas. When you learn to distinguish your own creativity from other people’s rehashed SEO tips, you’ll magnify your SEO powers tenfold. Question everything other SEOs say. Challenge them to back up their points with facts, data, and proof. Most of them CAN’T.

Find 3 active SEO forums …. This will teach you to recognize just how easily the SEO community obsesses over nonsense. Your schmuck list will explode while you are on this quest.

Write down your 10 best tips. If you don’t have 10 SEO ideas you haven’t shared with other people on the Web, you need to shut up. If you still have 10 unshared ideas, you have an “SEO secret”. It’s your competitive advantage. So shut up anyway and enjoy the knowledge that only you possess. Stupidity is its own reward, and people who give away their competitive advantage are just plain stupid.

Build and forget a domain. Check three things after six months: search referrals, inbound links, and the time people spend on your site. Repeat the evaluation at the 12-month mark. If you learn nothing from the experiment, start over again and keep doing it until you learn something — anything.

Build a site in another language. You have no idea of the SEO lessons this one experiment will teach you.

Write an SEO tutorial …. If you cannot think of anything to put into an SEO essay that doesn’t mention on-page optimization, links, and social media MUCH YOU HAVE YET TO LEARN about SEO, my young Padawan.

2 Age Range Focus Groups. You’ll be amazed at how much you’ll learn about successful Web site promotion just by asking people what they like and why they like it. But comparing the answers you get from different demographic groups helps you see the core values that matter most.

Add a second navigation system to your site. Think this is unnecessary? Then find a way for the second navigation system to add value. Search engine optimization adds value. Objections just get in the way of doing what SEOs need to do best: add value.

Promote a competitor through your forum signature. Do this for six months and you’ll eventually stop obsessing over how many links the other guy has.

Compliment other sites about their content. This will teach you how to treat Webmasters (who have never heard of you before) like they were human beings rather than link slaves waiting to do your bidding.

Create 10 doorway pages. Search engines don’t hate doorway pages, just spammy doorway pages. Every page on your site can act like an entry page. This exercise will teach you the difference between Web spam and content. Script kiddies won’t understand.

Build a query space. If you can generate 100 natural queries (that excludes all rank-checking) for an unused expression, you can help any web site build its search referral traffic. (NOTE: This exercise won’t make clients and prospects any smarter — just you.)

20 More Hard Core SEO Tips – What They Mean

Last year I tried to challenge people’s assumptions about HOW to optimize for search. This year I want people to think about what “search engine optimization” really means.

It’s not about links. It’s not about social media. It’s not about being tricky and deceptive.

Search engine optimization gives us the power and the freedom to participate in search as searchers, publishers, and even as indexers. We have to use that power responsibly, but more importantly we have to appreciate it for what it is: knowledge that most people don’t possess.

Be sure to read Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 16, 2009.