We thought we would throw together our own version of the 10 commandments of SEO. There are afew versions of the SEO commandments around, but we thought we could do a better job. Firstly we wanted to keep to the original script of the commandments, with easy to understand and critical laws that can be passed down through generations. If I had had my way, the main picture above would have had me coming down from an Apple store with two giant iSideTables in my hands.
These commandments also have a bias towards those guidlines created by Google, partly because they are readily available, but mainly because Google makes up about 500% of seo attention at the moment. We tried to pick the 10 that were critical for the performance of your website, not just the ones that we all do, like link building, that are nice. Our 10 commandments are;
- Thou shalt not link to bad guys
- Thou shalt not keyword Stuff
- Thou shalt not cloak pages
- Thou shalt not steal content
- Thou shalt not use hidden links
- Thou shalt create original content
- Thou shalt use meta tags
- Thou shalt use Robots.txt
- Thou shalt link sparingly
- Thou shalt provide a site-map
We also had a few commandments that got left over, and may just end up getting moved to our version of the sermon on the mount. Maybe that one will start with something like “Blessed are the bloggers…” Here are some of the things we could have included;
- Thou shalt have clear page hierarchy
- Thou shalt be accessible
- Thou shalt check for broken links
- Thou shalt use pretty URLs
- Thou shalt cross browser test
- Thou shalt optimize load times
- Thou shalt make pages primarily for users
- Thou shalt not spam the search engines
- Thou shalt avoid “doorway” pages
If there are any more out there, we would love to hear them. Maybe one day we will rewrite the bible from the perspective of search engines. Perhaps it could start with
“In the beginning TBL merged TCP/IP, hypertext and DNS to create the world wide web, and he saw that it was good.”
Maybe Moses is AOL and Jesus is Google, I don’t know. Perhaps someone else has a better idea of how this tortured metaphor fits together.
Google local business listings is fast becoming the “New” Seo for local businesses. The Google seven pack may soon be more important that traditional, organic SEO for small businesses. Local business owners can do many of these tasks in-house with a little bit of training!
See Free Video
I would add few more commands: 11. Hosting information (what other domains are hosted on the server/c-block of IP addresses) 12. Domain name canonicalisation 13. Set up 301 redirects for renamed or deleted pages. Never delete a 301 redirect 14.Citations/references of the domain in DMOZ.org 15.Update content frequently 16. Ratio of code to text in HTML
I am looking forward to your SEO bible.
There are certainly things that could have added, but for having just 5 “Thou shalt” SEO commandments, you did a pretty good job of summing up what’s vital. I agree with the previous posts, too; local listings, 301 redirects, and content updating would be next to make this list.