The following are some answers to questions I see on a regular basis. Many are along the same lines, but I believe have singular valid points. Seeing that the people who need these answers most probably won’t read this is disheartening to me. But, maybe a few of you will read this before asking, “How do I rank Good in the Google search thingy?”
SEO doesn’t come over night. Choose a subject that you have a passion for. If you do it correctly, you’ll be doing it forever!
When ranking goes to hell, don't panic. Wait it out before making hasty uneducated corrections. With the millions of factors that may have caused your change, you most likely won’t be able to point it out anyway without controlled testing. Most likely it’s a datacenter issue, or you’re logged into Google.
If your site is less than 6 months old, expect fluctuations and concentrate on solidifying your niche instead of watching every keyword movement.
Over-analyzation, hesitation, and procrastination are a SEO's worst enemy. Take action and record the results.
Time and efficient productivity are a SEO's best friends.
Short cuts offer short-term results.
The best way to gain ranking in Google's Organic search results: Write intriguing, insightful, unique, quality content and then promote that material to induce natural linking from relevant quality websites.
There are many ways to skin a cat. Don't forget the longtail! You can get just as much traffic from 100 noncompetitive keywords as you can some single highly competitive keywords. (Googler: your wedding invitation is in the mail.)
Don't be afraid to link to a quality website that relates to yours. This is what makes the Internet what it is. The link will only create more value in your page by offering relevant options. The loss in traffic will be compensated by the rank adjustment caused by the increased value in your webpage.
Make it simple enough for a 6 year old to navigate through. They’re your primary audience.
If your English is poor, build in your own language. At the very least, have your content written by someone fluent in the given language. Also, anyone writing copy needs to spell check and proof-read for grammar. Nothing turns a webpage from quality to garbage faster.
Before releasing your unique brilliant findings about Google, do some research and save yourself some embarrassment, and save us a waste of time and energy. (Listen up, Dino.)
Profile your target visitors, and track their entrance. Make that door a little bit wider.
Don’t waste time on black hat techniques or anything that produces short-term positive changes. Work on the long term and residual positive effects.
Fighting for #1 often unwittingly wins you other prizes along the way.
Keywords in your domain help in your ranking, but minutely in respect to what will keep you up top. Building a Brand is far more important in the long run.
Stick to Google guidelines. Most search engines follow similar rules. Buying links for the sole purpose of increasing organic rank is a risk not worth losing your honest work over.
Stop spamming for link juice. Blog comments, forum signatures, etc… Even if it’s worth something, it’s not worth the time and effort that could just as easily be put into something positive like contributing valuable content and making the internet richer.
Ignore the Google pagerank bar, Alexa stats as well as trying to find backlinks through Google. None of these things are truly accurate. They are either samplings or out of date at best.
Don’t expect everything to be given to you. If you enter a popular and well-maintained forum with a general question answered 3 times already that day, quit right now. Anyone not willing to do simple research on their own will not survive a career in SEO. Besides, if you don’t know how to use the search tool, how do you expect to conquer it?
On the other hand, everything you need is right in front of you. We are in an age where even the most elusive tasks have been spelled out for us somewhere on the web. Begin to read (with a grain of salt.)
Being still the infancy of the Internet, no search term is out of reach. Chances are very good that the site which holds #1 with your target keyword is run by a single guy sitting in his underwear in his mom’s basement. With a little creativity and some hard work, you can beat him while he’s playing D n’ D.
I’ve been designing websites for over 10 years, reading about SEO for as long as it’s been a term, and only really begun to take advantage of the possibilities in the last 5 years. It doesn’t come overnight, but is not impossible. Thinking big has always been my weakness. Because of this, I’ve developed a stronghold on an uber-niche, and in turn enjoy smaller earnings. I could have just as easily built a less strong presence for a very profitable term. There are many routes to take, you need to find your own path to success.
Please feel free to add more thoughts.
Originally Posted by THE BERG
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