Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips

It’s a little early to say that publishing “20 Hard Core SEO Tips” articles has become a tradition for SEO Theory but I definitely have been thinking about writing this article for the past year. The original 20 Hard Core SEO Tips article continues to attract new links and visitors every month. Like I said last year in 20 More Hard Core SEO Tips, I wish I could do that again.

The challenge with writing hard core SEO tip articles is that each one sets a higher expectation with the readership. It’s not so much that I am under pressure to outdo myself, but rather than I am simply under pressure to try and do as good as before.

And that would be a good starting point.

Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips – The List

1. Take your most popular article and write a sequel to it every year.
2. Launch 3 blogs on their own domains. Don’t build any links for them. Don’t promote them in any way. Use a different blog application for each one.
3. Pick your 3 favorite SEO bloggers. On their next three articles find something to disagree with and ONLY disagree with them in their comments.
4. Find an SEO forum you have never visited before and look at the questions and answers for the past six months without registering or commenting.
5. Pick 20 social media sites that use “rel=’nofollow’” and create content for them that draws traffic without interlinking them.
6. Stop bookmarking Web sites for a month. Delete your existing bookmarks (saving them to a file for later reimporting is okay).
7. Pick any competitive Web site you just beat in the SERPs and build links for it until it outranks your site.
8. Only use Google’s link query operator for a month when you do link research.
9. Pick a random homebody blog about any topic you have no interest in. Spend a month commenting on that blog site about every article. Write positive, supportive, in-depth comments.
10. Find three scraper blogs that accept comments without moderation. Go to town for a month.
11. Remove five pages of content from your site every week. Never restore them.
12. Find 10 random, unknown Web sites you have nothing to do with. Track their Google Toolbar PageRank for 12 months in a spreadsheet.
13. Pick any one topic and write a 200-word sentence about that topic which makes sense and does not induce insomnia or dizziness. Do this for 2 more topics.
14. Get a video camera and record yourself talking about SEO. Wait 1 week and play back the video. Do this until you know it’s better than any Matt Cutts video you’ve ever watched.
15. Write a 10-paragraph essay about any popular well-optimized query like “car rentals”, “cheap hotels”, etc. Invert the paragraphs. Now optimize the copy for the keyword and publish it.
16. Build and promote 10 Web sites with 5-10 pages each on them. The sites must be about real topics, offering real information, and carry no ads. Add a Links page to each that only links to .GOV or .EDU or real news Web sites. Put a contact form on each site that says, “Would you like a link? Send me a request.”
17. Choose your favorite SEO Web site. Print out every page on it or until you run out of paper.
18. Sign up for 10 ebooks, seminars, tutorials, etc. that promise to teach you the secrets of Web marketing success.
19. Find an old free-for-all links script. Install it on your site in such a way that only good sites are linked to.
20. Write a proposal to the U.S. government for optimizing the Library of Congress, the White House, and the Congressional Web sites.

Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips – The Explanations

Take your most popular article and write a sequel to it every year.
How much of a challenge it is for you to top yourself will show you something about how much of a challenge you are for your competitors.

Launch 3 low-key blogs on their own domains without promotion.
You’ll learn more about what it takes to create good content by creating content that has to stand on its own than by buying, begging, or building links for mediocre content.

Openly challenge your 3 favorite SEO bloggers.
If you can force your favorite SEOs to think harder, dig deeper, try harder — they’ll either improve their game even more (thus giving you greater value for your time) or you’ll realize you can find better things to do with your time than read their vapid, boring blogs.

Read a new SEO forum for six months.
After you’ve just browsed the questions and answers people normally post in SEO forums, you’ll get a feel for who knows what they are doing, who is just blowing smoke, and — most importantly — what the real issues facing the SEO community really are.

Optimize 20 NoFollow social media sites.
If you can build value into Web sites that obviously won’t pass PageRank and anchor text for you, you’re way ahead of the rest of the SEO world.

Avoid using browser bookmarks.
Having to search for what you want to find will remind you just how really hard it is to find anything useful through Web search.

Build links for the competitor you just outranked.
Once his site outranks yours, pull your links. Keep doing this until you’re sure he won’t build any more links to compete with you.

Only use Google’s link query operator for a month when you do link research.
Knowing which sites Google shows you links for versus those it won’t show links for tells you something. Knowing you have no way of determining which links pass value tells you something else. More importantly, if you develop the skill to use this technique correctly, you’ll be way ahead of the SEOs who laugh at Google’s link operator.

Write positive, supportive, in-depth comments for a month on a stranger’s blog.
If you are not amazed at the transformation in the blogger’s performance, you either picked an automated scraper blog or you have no idea of what it means to be positive and supportive. Learn how to push someone else to success. It works the same way for yourself.

Comment profusely on 3 scraper blogs.
Payback’s a bitch. It should require no more explaining than that. But be subtle.

Remove five pages of content from your site every week.
After all, it’s only content, right?

Track 10 sites’ Google Toolbar PageRank for 12 months in a spreadsheet.
At the end of the year you’ll only have good Toolbar data for 10 sites but at least you’ll have some good Toolbar data (which is more than anyone else in the SEO industry will be able to say).

Write 3 sensible 200-word sentences about different topics.
Learn to write something longer and more meaningful than “Great post!” You’ll find all sorts of opportunities opening up for you.

Create an SEO video Matt Cutts would link to.
Why be a schmuck? If you feel so compelled to create your own SEO video, at least practice making the videos for a few weeks until you actually come close to creating something decent and useful that won’t make you cringe. After all, if you put a video out there on the Web, someone may watch it.

Write an essay backwards for a competitive, spammy query.
Almost anything you write this way will surely be more interesting than the crap sites Google shows for these queries.

Openly solicit link requests on 10 good content sites.
You can take the sites down after you’ve received 1,000 link requests. If you find 10 good sites in those requests, link to them. But the point of this lesson is to teach you to never again send out one of those 990 crappy time-wasting link requests. Give yourself bonus points for doing due diligence if you identify any PageRank traps.

Print every page on your favorite SEO site.
If you’re asking why waste all that paper, think about what you just asked.

Sign up for 10 Web marketing success programs.
After you’ve read all their tips and tutorials and see they are repeating the same lame advice you can find on any random SEO blog or forum, you’ll never feel tempted to sign up for one of those “exclusive” tell-all programs again.

Modify a free-for-all script to accept only good links.
Learning to filter out other people’s garbage will teach you how to filter out your own. Anything left should be pretty good stuff.

Write a proposal to the U.S. government for optimizing the Library of Congress, the White House, and the Congressional Web sites.
Take this assignment seriously. You can decide whether to submit to the proper channels when you’re finished. But when you have finished, you should have a pretty darned good proposal template that will impress the heck out of just about everyone else.

Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips – What They Mean

The search engine optimization industry is stagnating in many ways. We just came out of a 2-year period in which PageRank Hoarding masqueraded as PageRank Sculpting and now it’s about to masquerade as PageRank Consolidation for another two years. Do you really, really want to obsess over the Emperor’s New Clothes or would you prefer to improve in the art and develop your skills further?

You can only prepare yourself for greater challenges by questioning the conventional wisdom you cling to as a safety net. Let go of your binky. It is tattered, full of holes, and isn’t doing you as much good as you think it is.

In your SEO career, you should adopt The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” as your theme song.