There is no magic in SEO. It's just work.

Here's the awful truth about search engine optimization:

There is no magic bullet.
There is no magic keyword list.
There is no secret code.
There is no meta tag trick.

There is only hard work.

I get asked a lot about SEO by prospective clients. Everyone wants a magic bullet, but the answer is unappealing. Unless you are willing to fork over bucketloads of cash every month to snake-oil ”SEO consultants“ that make their living with blackhat techniques like article spinning, keyword stuffing and link farms, you'll find the only reliable way to optimize your site for search engines is to optimize it for humans.

The rules today are the same as they were fifteen years ago.

Use the same language as your audience.

Write simple, clear headlines.

Write clearly.

Explain yourself on the very first page.

Hire an editor (like this one); they're worth every penny and then some.

Don't use jargon.

Write content worth reading.

And finally, do some research, identify and prioritize your key phrases, and write them into your content. Don't stuff; use ordinary, natural language — that's what Google and Bing want, because that's what humans want.

It's a lot of work. It's very hard work. And it's the only thing that works.

Comments

Friday, Aug 13, 2010 / 10:51am Andrew Feland said…

I'm just starting to dig into SEO for the Higgins website. Truer words were never spoken...

Friday, Aug 13, 2010 / 11:46am marc Sadowski said…

Well said! This is the first time I've seen common sense on this topic.

-Marc

Friday, Aug 13, 2010 / 5:04pm Patrick McPhail said…

A great man once had this conversation:

"What do you do?"

"I'm an SEO Consultant."

"Oh. How do you sleep at night?"

Wednesday, Oct 20, 2010 / 8:37am Christine Greeen said…

Thanks for stating what no one wants to hear - SEO is about understanding your audience, quality writing of relevant content....and the skill and time to do it right. Bravo!

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