There are about as many ideas about good SEO as there are Internet marketing professionals.  I can’t tell you how many times I have heard contradictory statements.  Things like never buy links (text-link-ads, etc.) only to turn around and find links to the site hosting the article that are clearly paid links.  So, as one of the many possible sources you can find on the Internet, consider these tips just more random thoughts about SEO.  In the end, you are going to have to take your own experiences and gut feelings and run with them (or get some advice from as many experts as you can contact).  NOTE: These tips assume that you want to keep your site for more than 3-6 months.  If you are willing to let it crash and burn then feel free to try any and/or all of these tactics.

Tip 1 – Be very suspicious.  If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is…  If you find a super quick way to get 1,000’s of links pointing to your site, chances are Google and others are already on to it so test carefully before taking too many shortcuts.

Tip 2 – Don’t use comment spam.  Don’t use blackhat tools like xrumer or the ultimate wordpress comment spammer to drop links on unwilling blog and forum owners.  This can bring you some great short-term link juice (if you are lucky), but eventually will catch up with you.

Tip 3 – Don’t buy text link ads.  Ha!  It’s like I set myself up for this in the introductory paragraph.  While purchasing keyword rich text links is very easy, it can be the quickest way to get your domain filtered and/or banned by Google.  It’s simply not worth the risk.

Tip 4 – Don’t excessively abuse social media networks.  Don’t be a Twitter or FaceBook spammer, it’s bad karma and frankly just not going to help you much in the long run anyway.

Tip 5 – When link building, focus on do-follow links.  If you come across a no-follow link, move on.  It’s not worth your time or energy.

Tip 6 – Don’t join link exchanges.  Reciprocal links are pretty much worthless.  Much like no-follow links, they don’t hurt you but they also don’t help you.  Don’t waste your time.

Tip 7 – Don’t focus solely on keyword search volume to pick keywords or domains that you are going after.  Think about how you could monetize that traffic IF you were able to rank for the keyword.  If you don’t have any ideas, don’t start… there is no point.

Tip 8 – Don’t try to game google with multiple doorway pages or large dynamically generated site directories.  Google is very aware of both of these tactics and will eventually penalize you for them.

Basically, when you are setting out on an SEO campaign ask yourself if what you are doing is truly the intent of the Internet or site that you are working with.  If you are not providing value, you are eventually going to have a problem.  That’s why most people eventually come back to content being king.  Make sure that you have great content, a great design, a great overall experience for your visitors, and your success will be great!

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