Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Laws of Search Engine Optimization

1. Content is King

2. Links: Quality matters more than Quantity

3. Never assume visitors are stupid.

4. Read The Guidelines

5. Be Unique, Be Proud And Be Happy

6. Never assume that search engines are stupid

7. Never submit to directories; submit to Quality Directories - know the difference

8. If your use of key words looks silly - it almost certainly is.

9. If you own a quality domain name, then use it.

10. Divide your site and be conquered.

11. If you use Meta Tags, then use them correctly.

12. Don't Rock The Boat When You Permanently Redirect.

13. Clients whose sites get banned will probably not pay.

14. More than one hyphen is international shorthand for idiot webmaster; More than two hyphens is Galaxy-wide shorthand for "I'd be a spammer if only I knew how"

15. Always buy domain.com, if only to permanently redirect it to domain.somethingelse

16. Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifs

18. Article Farming Helps the Farmer More Than the Turkey

19. http://www.domain.com/ is the single most important URL on your site.

21. Always buy similar-sounding domain names.

23. Standard Forms Should Never Be Used.

24. Never place an undisguised email address on a web site.

27. Always consider buying domains with similar names to yours.

34. There is no point submitting any page to a search engine.

42. Maintain a sense of humour at all times.

Please Note:

I didn't invent most of these laws; I collected them. And I'm arrogantly adding my name to them (see Quadrille's 42nd Law) In one or two cases, a few individuals noticed them, and asserted them in the face of ritual humiliation from others - but mostly, they are a consensus view, built up over a couple of years activity in SEO forums.

These are, generally, good laws - but as in real life, there are exceptions; while the 14th Law depracates hyphens, if file names are cities, then Newcastle-Upon-Tyne should never be left out, and if madonna.htm is ok, then so is carole-bayer-sager.htm

In reality, a more useful title for the page would be would be "Quadrille's Old Chestnuts", as these can be used as stock responses to those who join a forum to ask a burning question that has been answered 30 times before. This week alone. But that title doesn't sound so good!

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted First Law

Content is King

No, of course I didn't invent this one - but any set of Internet laws must include it - and it must be at #1.

Bill Gates said it in 1996, and all credit to him; he was right then, and he's right now. Other factors matter - but the single most important feature of any web site is the content. Read Bill's words, ten years on ...

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Second Law

Links: Quality matters more than Quantity

Not the old 'Content is King, Links are the Queen'; these days links come with a price. While it is essential that you have links, in order to get a search engine listing, and to climb up the results, it is also essential that the majority of those links are relevant, from quality sites, and not part of a reciprocation deal - if they are to be a benefit, not a hindrance to your site.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Third Law

Never assume visitors are stupid.

The 'average surfer' does not have all the inside info that many SEO folk take for granted - but they are not stupid, and certain site behaviours often raise suspicions; uber-long-hyphenated file names, just like pages of waffle and stuffed keywords are increasingly recognised; indeed, any 'trick' that's been around a while will show diminishing returns. respecting your reader's intelligence, plus plain old fashioned honesty never quite went out of fashion: Visitor Respect is The New Black

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Fourth Law

Read The Guidelines

Search engines and directories have guidelines. They are there to help you get the best out of that search engine. Find them. Read them. Eat the page. This Law is the Internet's best kept secret.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Fifth Law

Be Unique, Be Proud And Be Happy

Unique works on the Internet, and nothing works better. One unique article on your own site is worth 1000 rehashed clone articles on 100 article farms. And you'll feel better, too.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Sixth Law

Never assume that search engines are stupid

It's not unusual for Google-bashers to whine about somerecent stupidity of the monolithic search engine. In most cases, that's a sign of an idiot who has been caught stealing the family silver, who hasn't got the sense to keep his mouth shut.

Search engines are not, of course, perfect - but most of what they do has a reason, and usually the tweaks do what's intended. So when someone moans that his perfect site has been penalized because of a stupid SE cockup, first take a large pinch of salt - then ask for a URL to check. If it's not forthcoming, it's usually for the obvious reason - the site would tell a different story

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Seventh Law

Never submit to directories; submit to Quality Directories - and know the difference

There are tens of thousands of general directories, 95% of which are little more than link exchanges or 'made for advertising' clones. None of that lot have any SEO value, and could damage your site.

It is only that small group of quality directories that matters in any way; choose them yourself, or use a submission service that demonstrates that it understands the difference.

Find out about Quality Directories

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Eighth Law

If your use of key words looks silly - it almost certainly is.

Search engines set out to emulate the user experience; as keyword counting is not difficult for computer programs, you can be confident that SEs will notice 'excessive' use of key words or phrases. SEs look at the whole page - all the shared copy, links etc., as well as that page's 'unique content'.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Ninth Law

If you own a quality domain name, then use it - or you may find the quality was an illusion

In general, using a strong name is the best defense against having the name undermined by another site; but trademark ownership trumps almost very hand.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Tenth Law

Divide your site and be conquered.

There's a myth going around that starting multiple sites on one topic is somehow a good SEO 'trick'. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you have one topic, much better to have one site, removing all risk, halving your marketing / seo effort, and concentrating your ranking strength.

A divided site means incoming links will be divided between domains, rather than all coming to one - further damaging your ability to do well in search engine rankings.

And there is zero doubt that duplicating your own pages increases marketing effort, reduces ranking, and often confuses customers. There really is no good reason for dividing your efforts.

The same applies with multiple sub-domains; it may work for the Big Guys - it's most unlikely to work for you.

It has been suggested that the 'one site rule' could be damaging; "All eggs in one basket and all that." I think that's a matter of conscience. I never heard of a sound and safe site having anything to fear; it's the naughty boys who stand to lose by this rule! The single caveat is to keep an eye on Google; search engine advice does change. Not enough, ever, to destroy a site that has always been clean - but over a period of time, the emphasis does change, and things that never mattered, suddenly do.

On balance, for the up-to-date webmaster, Divide your site and be conquered.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 11th Law

If you use Meta Tags, then use them correctly - failure to do this may lead to duplicate page problems, ugly SE listings and conceivably, pages not being listed at all.

Many search engines and directories use part or all of the meta description in their results listings; an absent meta description may lead to 'raw code' being shown instead; keyword packing results in an ugly listing too, while identical or absent meta descriptions (or identical title tags) can lead to absent or supplementary listings. Meta keywords are currently used by few search engines. But that could change tomorrow.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 12th Law

Don't rock the boat when you 301;redirect from site to site, keep filenames and folders the same, avoid major changes to content.

A 301 permanent redirect will transfer people following 'old' links; but to do well in the long term, the 'new' site needs links of its own.

While you will get 'lost people' with the 301, you will not transfer any 'Google benefit', if you have changed the structure and content; you are not transferring 'like for like', but are tranferring from old to new. And new pages/sites will always be subject to a the 'aging delay' before full benefit.

301s work best when they are domain to domain, and nothing changes. So visitors go from www.domain1/folder1/filename.htm to www.domain2/folder1/filename.htm, where filename.htm has NOT substantially changed. Every deviation from that level of simplicity risks reducing the benefit of the 301.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 13th Law

Clients whose sites get banned will probably not pay.

It's always worth remembering that risks or experiments on a client's site should never happen without the client's full understanding and consent. Many SEOs who like to 'push the envelope' learn this the hard way. Clients may push for results, but there are no shortcuts to good SEO

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 14th Law

More than one hyphen is international shorthand for idiot webmaster; More than two hyphens is Galaxy-wide shorthand for "I'd be a spammer if only I knew how"

Who's counting? Not me. But it's the look of the thing; would you really spend money at http://my-wonderful-domain.info/my-supa-folda/And-anotherfolda/boring-file.com?

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 15th Law

Always buy domain.com, if only to permanently redirect it to domain.somethingelse

There are very few honest guarantees in this business (plenty of dishonest ones) - but losing out to the .com ranks up there with the best of them: it's a dead cert.

Dot coms have many structural advantages; in browsers, in search and in visitors minds. Few people looking for a dot com accidentally get the dot net - but many who wanted the .net will end up on the .com. In most cases, using the .com is also preferable, the main exceptions being non-US local sites, and some non-English sites.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 16th Law

Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifs

Not really an attack on geeks, who can't help being what they are (any more than you can help being what you are), nor an attack on GIFs.

Just a punny reminder that the web is a dangerous place; if someone promises something that seems too good to be true, then it almost certainly is.

For those that need to know, the saying is from Virgil; Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis - "I fear the Greeks even bringing gifts" (usually mistranslated as Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts).

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 18th Law

Article Farming Helps the Farmer More Than the Turkey

Advice to post articles on article farming sites works on the shakey premise that the farm has a good standing with the search engines. That is very rarely the case.

In fact, very few article farms figure in the search engine results, and even if yours does okay, it's unlikely to help your article much, and even less likely to help the link to your site.

Additionally, few article directories get many human visitors, so the number of direct referrals will be small.

Your article will help the article farmer of course.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 19th Law

http://www.domain.com/ is the single most important URL on your site.

Using it enables people to find your site quickly and easily, and will get much better search engine placement, if used wisely, than any other URL. A redirect from http://www.domain.com/ to http://www.domain.com/folder/page-number-346.asp (or worse) is one of the most SEO-unfriendly acts you can perform

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 21st Law

Always buy similar-sounding domain names.

When you buy a domain name, always buy similar sounding names, and similar spellings, as a defence against someone else getting it. If you don't, a domain squatter, a malware-ridden MFA site, or even a porn merchant might get it.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 23rd Law

Standard Forms Should Never Be Used.

Standard forms, on forums, guest books or anywhere else, are an invitation to spammers; they have software that enables them to submit boring rubbish endlessly, simply by knowing your form's URL. These industrial strength form-spammers are too stupid to understand 'nofollow', and really don't care if you remove their rubbish - they submit to thousands, on the basis that a handful will stick. One day, they'll learn that even those few really don't help them, but hey-ho!

These idiots do not 'individualize' their attacks to each site; they have all the details set up for standard form fields, and simply add your URL. So in the form code, instead of input=name, put input=aardvark; instead of email, put sandpaper ... and so on.

In 95% of cases, this will either eliminate the spam completely, or result in a 'blank entry', which will not cause offence or irritation to your visitors, and can be removed at your leisure.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 24th Law

Never place an undisguised email address on a web site.

It's just an invitation to spammers. Use a simple javascript snippet to obfuscate the address in the page code, while still appearing to visitors - and still working.

If you are concerned about those who will not use javascript (all 22 of them), then use an image like this: . The downside is that some users will not bother to copy it, and it may also go out of date (like the one in the example).

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 27th Law

Always consider buying domains with similar names to yours ... before someone else does.

Not worth bidding hundreds of dollars - but if you have bluewidgets.com, then a few dollars to secure blue-widgets.com may save heartache later. I'd also recommend considering .net and your country tld too (eg bluewidgets.co.uk).

The 15th Law already advises you to buy domain.com, if only to permanently
redirect it to domain.somethingelse - but widening your net - depending on your finances - is a wise move. The best defense of a domin name is, of course, registering it as a trademark.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 34th Law

There is no point submitting any page to a search engine.

The only effective way to get a listing that sticks is to have at least one link to the page, from a page already listed in google. Pages may show up if you submit them, but they may not stay for long - and they will never do well in other people's searches without links.

Getting links and building your site is a much better way to spend your time than submitting; the SEs will do it for you if you have links - and usually just as quickly as you can!

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted 42nd Law

Maintain a sense of humour at all times.

Quadrille's Oft-Quoted Laws are subject to renumbering on a rational, irrational and random basis - but usually to try and get some order of priority.

This page is subject to updating as and when New Laws are Handed Down.

First Published: 20 August 2006 - last updated 9 July 2008
This article may be published elswhere, provided this footnote is included as is,
with a live link to the source: http://www.sick-site-syndrome.com/articles/