In all honesty, SEO has far more rules and nuances than just ten commandments. However, there are ten top things to remember and stick to when you are optimizing your website.

Commandments one through three

The first commandment of SEO states that your absolute source of traffic is your search engine. So what does this mean? What it means is that the search engines are all powerful when it comes to generating traffic for your website, more specifically free traffic. Even if you get traffic from other places such as forums and blogs, it originally started out as a search engine query. Commandment number two, never, ever, use link farms, not even if you are desperate.

The idea behind building links is to build your credibility through the personal judgement of other people. Link farms go against this principle and offer links left, right and centre. Links building is important for your SEO, but it is crucially important not to abuse any of the rules.

Number three; don’t ever mix Yahoo and Google advertisements on the same web page. This is a huge no-no and will bring you unnecessary grief when the titans clash. Not only that, but you could lose your credibility with said search engines and some of your advertising accounts could end up being suspended. Just don’t do it.

Commandments four, five and six

You will respect your host as well as your domain registrar according to SEO commandment number four. Respect for those who hold the well-being of your website in the balance is always a good thing. Bringing disgrace to either your domain registrar or your host is far more trouble than what the apparent payoff may seem. Getting a bad reputation spreads like wildfire and precedes you wherever you go.

Google has the power to discriminate against an offender and that seriously squashes your SEO. Abide by the rules and conditions of using any tools, services or products provided by a search engine. The engines will notice when you overstep there boundaries and will make your life difficult as a result. Don’t commit industrial web-espionage. This is illegal and could land you in more hot water than you can handle.

Last commandments to follow

Don’t steal. Stealing content from other websites is a huge no-no and will get you into lots of trouble. When you want good SEO and good ratings you need to stay far away from trouble. Do not lie. Lying about your products or services, scamming people and the like is not tolerated by the engines. Keep it truthful and keep it free of deceit and manipulation in order to keep your website in the engines’ good books.

Steer clear of adult content. Many of the advertisers on the engines don’t want to be associated with that kind of thing. This leads to the engines looking at your website in an unfavourable light. Lastly, don’t be jealous and nasty because of that. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but when you mimic competitors you will not have the same success they are enjoying. Quite the contrary.

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