20 Hard Core SEO Tips for 2013

Every year since 2007 I have shared 20 hard core SEO tips to help people improve their search optimization skills in much the same way Mr. Miyagi helped his Karate students improve their martial arts. He had them perform what seemed like ordinary or counter-intuitive things that were, in fact, teaching their muscle memories how to perform specific skills. Of course, the idea that you can become a black belt-capable Karate enthusiast in four days of washing, waxing, and painting cars and fences is absurd — but you have a year to master these hard core SEO tips until the next set come out.

20 Hard Core SEO Tips for 2013 – the List

1. Match each of these Google updates to appropriate SEO writers: PageRank Sculpting, Panda, (Not Provided), Blogacalypse, Penguin, Payday Loan.
2. Write a plan for placing 100 links to your most important, most highly valued Website.
3. Implement the link plan you created for Tip No. 2.
4. Write a 5,000-word article about anything; do NOT paginate it.
5. Find a heavily spammed out Website and permanently link to it from your home page WITHOUT using “rel=’nofollow'”.
6. Publish a press release that includes no links & get it to rank 1st for an active keyword.
7. Pick your favorite local cuisine restaurant and build a “fan site” for it; get that site to rank for the restaurant name.
8. Write a 1,000-word essay about the history of content marketing without mentioning SEO or the Internet.
9. Create a Website that is slower than 98% of the Web and promote it to the top of a moderately competitive query.
10. Find 10 SEO blog posts you really like that don’t include in-url or on-page dates. Figure out when they were REALLY published.
11. Design a Website that only (works well and looks good) on a smart phone.
12. Launch a new Website and block Google from crawling & indexing it.
13. Launch a new Website and block ALL the search engines from crawling & indexing it.
14. Visit your 10 favorite non-marketing blogs. Pick your 1 favorite article from each. Now write rebuttals to those 10 articles.
15. Compile a list of 10 blogs about 1-word everyday things: gloves, hats, purses, shoes, etc. Read each one every day for a month.
16. Use Bing for “link research”.
17. Write a “how to optimize your Website” article that doesn’t use the word “optimize” in any way.
18. Take the sentence “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” and expand it to 100 words.
19. Find a window overlooking a busy road and stare out of it for 10 minutes.
20. Use a paintball gun to create a work of art.

20 Hard Core SEO Tips for 2013 – the Explanations

Match SEO Bloggers to Major Updates – Search algorithm updates don’t just happen randomly. They happen because people adopt practices that become abusive. We’ll never know “who started it” for any of these practices, but you can tie every major Google update to the advice that some SEO bloggers and forum personalities have shared repeatedly. If you see a pattern of correlation between advice and updates among your favorite SEO writers, you need to rethink where you get your online marketing ideas.

Write a 100-link Placement Plan – Many people are now afraid of linking. That’s the wrong attitude to take. I and others warned the SEO community repeatedly for years that their aggressive link marketing tactics would backfire; but I and others have also reminded people for years that you do need links. Learn the difference between bad planning and smart marketing.

Implement the Link Plan You Just Wrote – Not because “SEO is all about links”. It never has been. You want to implement that link plan so that you overcome the new “fear of links” craze that has swept online marketers. You can’t do this without links. You just need to learn when to place your own links and when not to.

Write an Unpaginated 5,000-word Article – Because long copy has always worked and will always work, you need to understand WHY it seems to fail for some people. There’s nothing like having to fix your own mistakes or taking a chance and realizing you were wrong to believe it could not be done. Remember the cardinal rule of writing long copy: this has to be something YOU will want to read 2 years from now.

Link to a Spam Site from Your Home Page – Again, people are afraid of links today. It’s not the links you should fear; it’s the bad marketing practices that lead you to make bad decisions. You won’t solve that problem by refusing to build links any more. Links are not the problem. Lazy marketers are the problem. Face your fears and overcome them.

Rank a Link-empty Press Release – SEOs should never have perverted online press releases into link vehicles. Learn to write and use press releases correctly. They can be a great source of visibility and traffic. You just need to learn the difference between “news” and “bullshit”.

Build Restaurant Fan Sites – Because, seriously, the restaurant industry needs a huge online makeover. Their Websites are awful and it’s hard to find a restaurant Website when Google buries them under all those ridiculous review sites.

Write About the History of Content Marketing – Because if you do your research you’ll realize what an idiot you look like for calling yourself a “content marketer”.

Promote a Very Slow Website to the Top of SERPs – Because you don’t understand what “this only affects about 1% of the Web” actually means, you need to spend time in the 1% next door to that first 1%.

Figure Out When Everfake Blogs Publish Their Content – You don’t need to be afraid of dates any more than you need to be afraid of links. Tell people when you publish your content. If they really want to know, they can find out when it was first published. And then you look REALLY stupid and smarmy.

Block Google from a New Website – Because you need to learn to market without Google.

Block ALL Search Engines from a new Website – Because you need to learn how to market without search engines.

Rebut Your 10 Favorite Non-marketing Bloggers – First, you’ll learn to disagree gracefully by practicing against people whose work you enjoy and respect; second, you’ll learn to write from the other viewpoint and being able to see the Web through someone else’s eyes is absolutely mandatory for SEO.

Read 10 1-word Concept Blogs for a Month – Because you need to understand that other people don’t care about the odds of success; they just do it anyway.

Use Bing for “link research” – Given that you do link research, this is probably the only way you’ll improve from “shamelessly incompetent” to anything better than that. Bing is not as forgiving as Google. Use that to your advantage.

Write a “How to Optimize” article – Because I am tired of reading “how to optimize” articles that use the word “optimize” so much they don’t actually tell you how to do anything useful.

The Quick Brown Fox… in 100 Words – Because you need to learn how to write long copy about vague topics that is interesting, useful, and meaningful. Using “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” as the seed for a long, helpful and even instructive sentence creates greater value than simply “being there” for the keywords and the queries; and you’ll also learn something about the arts of punctuation, grammar, and the powerful strengths of creating really neat long sentences. Don’t worry if you don’t get to 100 words. It’s the journey that matters, not the destination.

Stare at a Busy Road for 10 Minutes – After your 10 minutes are up, imagine if you could have made a sale to the drivers of every one of those vehicles that just drove by, ignoring you. That is your relationship with Web traffic. Stop obsessing over the traffic that passed you up. Focus on the traffic you can bring in to your Website.

Use a Paintball Gun to Create a Work of Art – This is the clearest metaphor for how search engine optimization is packaged and promoted today. You throw every dumb idea that comes out of the SEO blogosphere and conference circuit at your Websites and yet you wonder why the results are so dismal. Get back to basics. Remaster the fundamentals.

Be sure to also read:

1. 20 Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 16, 2007
2. 20 More Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 16, 2008
3. Another 20 Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 16, 2009
4. 20 New Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 17, 2010
5. 20 Hard Core SEO Tips You Should Have Used, published on October 20, 2011
6. An Additional 20 Hard Core SEO Tips, published on October 16, 2012