There are about a zillion different opinions about SEO around what works and what doesn’t. Some folks even go as far as to attempt to set up so called scientific studies to prove their hypothesis. 

Anyone with a grade 12 education can see that the bulk of the “studies” that have been done are invalid, usually in more than one way, and are usually statistically irrelevent.

I beleive that many folks place too much emphasis on the ins and outs of SEO, especially those with relatively new sites. You can optimize the HELL out of a 3-page web site – but that’s not going to help you rank well for your terms.  Any niche you enter (except under-served niche areas – which i’ll talk about in a later post) you should expect to have to do a hell of a lot of work to make any headway. 

The first thing anyone should focus on is building quality content. You’ve heard it a thousand times, but still, there are millions of new sites going up with NO content to speak of. Having a cool template or design won’t pay the bills I’m afraid. Think about the sites you gravitate to. They are typically “best-in-class” – take note of that phrase “best in class” – because it is important. 

The search engines treat niches the same way we treat any topic in real life. We want the best, and we don’t want to fuck around with the the lame crap on the periphery. For example – in real life, when you visit a city, you want a map that has all of the roads and highways, not one with just 2 or 3 of the main roads. The same thing is true on the net. If you are searching for information on a city, you are looking for the most authoritative one or two sites on that city. The rest – you could give a fuck about.

My point is that you need to ensure that you at least have some content section, such as a glossary, that is “best in class” – meaning you have the biggest and most complete glossary available on the net, bar none. Glossary is just one example. There are many – and what they are depends heavily on your topic.

Comments welcome.