… but this one is not meant to educate the masses.

Of course, the search engine officials are telling us SEOs to keep things clean and to follow the rules. And really, we want to follow the rules and keep our little white hat unstained. Honest guv’, we do. At least we want everyone else to follow those rules and be good. However, we are living in the fast lane and we can’t be arsed to write 150 pages of greatness, and then wait for people and search engines to pick up on those in an all-natural way. Nah, we really need a good dollop of grey on our hats to get ahead. And I don’t mean pigeon poo.

First grown-up step on the SEO ladder is often to visit forums and read, or even sign up. That’s great. SEO forums come in all shapes and sizes and shades of hat, ranging from angelic white like Doug’s forum to infra-black like Earl’s. Then again: you’re not that extreme. You just want your pages to rank decently. The following list will take 10 of the most common whitehat SEO myths and will add to those a grain of salt (or more) in order to turn them into real-life SEO tips.

1. Content is king.
Hahahaha. Move on to the next one please. Ok, for the record: nowadays you cannot rank any page without links. However, you can rank any page with targetted links. Just add your favourite keyword on the page once to dodge the google bombing filter eh.

2. Pagerank is dead.
It is not. On Google, you need pagerank to get anywhere. The other search engines use similar algorithms. Common denominator is links. Nice, proper <A HREF=”…”> links. Doesn’t matter what the anchor text is (at this point), just get the backlink. However, don’t believe all you see on the Google toolbar. The pagerank indicator does not necessarily correspond with the actual and correct pagerank of the page you’re viewing. In fact I have uninstalled the toolbar a long time ago, effectively freeing up space that belonged to the webpages I was viewing in the first place. Liberating, I tell you.

3. Rewrite your pages to have .html extensions.
In the days of yore, some search engine bots would ease off crawling dynamic pages like .php and .asp. If only to prevent server overloads crashing the site in question. These days, it doesn’t really matter anymore. Furthermore, what’s the use of getting your pages crawled every day when in fact they haven’t changed for months? Just leave the .php extensions on, and even the query strings if you feel like it. Spend your time more wisely.

4. Don’t link out to a “bad neighbourhood”.
Oh please. As long as you’re not linking back and forth within the very worst of link spamming networks, then the odd dodgy link won’t hurt your webpage or website one bit. (Sorry, no real-life example here.)

5. Avoid shared servers and go for dedicated IPs.
Again, unless you host your entire blackhat crosslinking network on there, a shared server is not going to do you any harm. Keep in mind that the majority of websites are on shared servers. The search engines have grown accustomed to them. Better yet: why not browse your server’s IP for domains and pick a couple of nice and clean websites made by others and link to them?

6. Don’t buy links. And if you sell links, use rel=”nofollow”.
This rule needs to be adjusted. Ok, bought links are frowned upon, officially. However, if enough care is taken to avoid leaving the usual “footprint” of bought links, then buy away if you have the money to spare.

7. Keep your “keyword density” around 5%.
Duh. Even Randfish knows this is not true. Some landing pages for flash sites have a keyword density of 50 - 100% and still rank tops. There is no such thing as a fixed, ideal keyword density.

8. DMOZ is dead.
Ok it may not be as powerful as it used to be, but if you have 15 minutes to spare, come up with a nice title and description and submit your website. Who knows eh? Don’t go overboard though: most dmoz editors have day jobs and some take months to update their categories. Don’t bug them. Umm ok bug them a little but not too often.

9. Don’t use CSS like “visibility:hidden” or “display:none”.
True, spammy hidden text is icky. What’s more, it isn’t even that effective. But don’t believe the myth that just using css like that will get your pages penalised. There are many legitimate uses for hidden content on web pages, dynamic menus being one of them. Just make sure it will never come to a “manual review”.

10. Use valid code.
Nice to aim for. Not necessary for good rankings. Keep in mind that half of mankind has an IQ of less than 100 and is truly puzzled by all but the simplest html code. People just do their best at writing html, but can’t be expected to be perfect. Search engine spiders have adapted to that, and they are very lenient. If your pages are already indexed and ranking nicely, validating your code won’t improve things. On a side note: if you are using <TABLE>s and are happy with how your pages look and behave, then don’t be tempted to rewrite them to clean css. Really, the bots can’t be arsed about tables or css.

Ok that’s enough for now, let’s stop before this turns into a multipage rant. Top 10s read better than top 30s anyway. Just stay tuned for more

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