SEO for Nice People

Blogger and developer Matt Gemmell has gazed into the dark side of of search engine optimization (SEO), and while he understands the value of having your personal site, your blog, or your company's web site rank well in search results, he's not willing to sell his soul to do it. Instead, he's written a simple guide to SEO for non-dicks.

So instead of, say, creating a fake network of blogs to promote your stuff in hopes that Google will up your SEO ranking, Gemmell offers a few simple, ethical, and tested tips that—while not magic bullets to visibility for your online stuff—will help your ranking in search results while also having the pleasant side effect of letting you sleep at night. For example, if you're a blogger:

Keep writing. Relevance is a democratic process, and it also naturally declines if not actively maintained. That's what relevance means. If you're not willing to keep updating your site because you actually have something new to say, you don't deserve to be thought of as relevant. Just accept it, and move on. Do something else. Be relevant elsewhere. You don't strive for relevance; you just are or aren't, to whatever current degree the rest of the internet feels appropriate. Some topics retain relevance more than others, but ultimately it quite rightly declines. 

 Like I said, it's not magic, but if you're interested in simple ways you can make your online presence better known (everybody's got some online presence these days), Gemmell's tips are a good starting point. For more ethical tips, see our previous guide to SEO made easy.