Good tips!

I believe the SEO phrase should be replaced with those tips, cause if it is SEO 2.0, I believe it's just hype. What is described in this post is more about experience and mediation. So let's call it Search Experience Optimization, that would fit better.

These are great suggestions for anyone looking to improve their status on the search engines. Although I do not completely agree that SEO has become entirely obsolete, there is no denying that following these 10 steps will help improve your site's standings.

Does anyone have hard numbers if these phlethora of social bookmarking icons are used at all? My guess is that their users have bookmarklets and these icons are just visual clutter.

Martin, here is some data from last year:
http://ekstreme.com/thingsofsorts/seosem/popularity-of-social-bookmarking-sites
In general you are right that they might clutter more than be of use, especially if you choose to add more than 10 on your site. Socializer, Add This and similar widgets allow to un-clutter social bookmarking though.

Mike, SEO will be still around but SEO as we know it is obsolete. SEO 2.0 will prevail ;-)

newswer, this indeed is a great acronym interpretation. Can I use it?

James Xuan. Thank you very much, praise by other Google Blogoscoped power users is very much appreciated.

Great advice. I'm at an SEM/SEO firm right now, and in addition I'm just wading into publishing my own personal blog on advertising, technology, and media. mikekowieski.blogspot.com

Tadeusz

No problem, use it. Im looking forward to creating a blog on SEO... I have been working in this field from 2000 to 2002, but then left my job for some other adventures. Im right now writing my MSC dissertation and I came up with this SEO acronym. Im looking foward to opening a blog. Do you guys think another SEO blog makes sense after all the quality blog we have got around?

Interesting numbers, Tadeusz.

I have mixed feelings about these rows of icons on every page, I simply find them ugly and visual clutter.

An A / B testing to determine what influence (if any) they have on PI and visitor numbers and links to your site would be great. But I can't think of a way that would be methodically sound to draw conclusions.

The question is: When you do not include these icons, will users of social bookmarking services bookmark your page by other means in the same number?
  

> The question is: When you do not include
> these icons, will users of social bookmarking
> services bookmark your page by other means
> in the same number?

Good question.
Somewhat related: sometimes, an automated Digg badge showing the number of Diggs stopped me from blogging something... because I noticed the article already had so many Diggs that it was probably on the Digg homepage (meaning many might've seen it already, so it wasn't as interesting to blog about).

I could imagine that in some regards a Digg badge helps because you may get some Diggs from it. I could also imagine that in other cases, a Digg user coming from Digg, evaluating your article and then seeing the Digg badge, might like your story less/ be less likely to digg it (thinking it's "over-optimized", like spammy things sometimes are).

> The question is: When you do not include
> these icons, will users of social bookmarking
> services bookmark your page by other means
> in the same number?

Overall, I'm sure the icons increase bookmarking.

"Ease of use promotes use". (That was one of Apple's marketing slogans back in the 1980s, and it's as true now as it was then. For example, if I peel an apple then my kids will eat it. But if they need to peel their own apple, they are more likely to eat a biscuit instead.)

<<James Xuan. Thank you very much, praise by other Google Blogoscoped power users is very much appreciated.>>
I just wish I could write such good articles.

I've never understood the concept of trackbacks and I'm glad Blogger didn't implement it. They mostly clutter the list of comments. You can always display the backlinks (like Blogger does).

Good tips ... applied to you own blog, a cool "top list" would be a rating of 10 major CMS regarding SEO : wordpress, drupal, etc .... I'd love to see that :-)!

"Ease of use". You can argue that hitting a 16x16 area in an area of 20 other icons is not easy, and at least I need some time to identify the link to the service I use.

Also what about the bookmarklet argument. I can imaging that users of social bookmarking services are rather tech savy so they have them anyway in their toolbar. And the services heavily promote them.

To stay in the analogy: Your kids have their automated apple peeler in their pockets.

Also: To much noise on the page might discourage users from coming back to your site and makes it more difficult to use the site.

> Also: To much noise on the page might discourage users from coming
> back to your site and makes it more difficult to use the site.

That's a very real downside. Also every extra image or JavaScript on the page slows it down a bit.

I'm sure that having the icon increases social bookmarking. But does it do enough to be worth the cost? I don't know. On my own pages I have just a StumbleUpon button at the moment. StumbleUpon brings lots of traffic (though not particularly valuable traffic).

Mike: Your blog has a unique viewpoint. I like that. But you should switch to Wordpress ;-)

newsert: Don't create just "another SEO blog", create the "naked SEO blog" or the "SEO from Mars" blog the "Stop SEO blog!".

Martin: Please take note that Socializer, Add This and other similar Services offer widgets for your site instead of too many icons.
Indeed I am convinced that buttons, especially the Digg buttons with the number of votes make people click more often. I always do if there is a button and I like the story.

Philipp: Your points are valid but those occasions occur rather rarely whereas Digg users clicking happen to cross your way more often. Especially as not all Digg users are bloggers. So you are lowering the threshold for active participation. People have to take care though. As I mentioned above you need very good hosting to survive a Digg frontpage so don't do it if you are on shared hosting.

Roger: I agree :-)

James Xuan: Just try, I wasn't born as a blogger either.

Ionut: Trackbacks made the blogosphere what it is, a sphere, before that you had blogs but not a coherent sphere. That's why I switched to Wordpress in 2003.

Alan: Very good idea, but rather difficult to find ten of them. I might do it anyways. Subscribe to my feed ;-)

A nice idea would be to only show the icons for the services the visitor uses. Possible with Javascript (as long as the user stays logged in via a cookie), but requires the services cooperation to be reliable. And there are privacy problems, obviously.

You can actually find out, without any extra cooperation from the third-party site, if a user has visited that third-party site recently:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-08-31-n42.html

Wordpress "search engine friendly out of the box"??

First time I've heard that claim – sure it's better than Drupal, Joomla etc out of the box, but it can be a pig to get it fully search engine friendly, with all the extra plugins you have to seek out and install before you have full control over the URL structure, links (ie nofollow), etc.

You could use the :visited trick, but it would not be reliable. You can check http://example.com and http://example.com/ , but you cannot check http://example.com/home/USERNAME and such. Due to bookmarks, an user might not have opened the site's home page for ages.
  
This function could be something to pitch to the social bookmark sites. Get to big "social icons" plugins on board and pitch it first as "We will emphasize your service if we can determine the visitor is your user". A problem would be adaption by the users. If this is done as an opt in, most won't bother to change the setting, as most users won't bother to review any opt-in changes you introduce.

pagespank: Check this article out
http://seo2.0.onreact.com/quit-seo-use-wordpress
I am not the only one to say that.

I commented about this in http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2007/08/seo_is_not_about_top_10_rankin.html

Yeah ok, nice post and blah blah blah lots of applauds just for the sake of the time you took to write your post but... did you took some time to "read" what in the heck you are writing actually? You say Forget about on site seo, and then you recommend to use wordpress which is already SE friendly coded (heck, it has its good and bads tho), than you say forget about link building but you advice people to submit site on some CSS directories to get a link back.

   Am i drunk, or you love to contradict yourself?

sorry but your tips are actually basic SEO tips and they are not obselote like you suggest

We'll I feel that there are somethings you just cant change. If a term has been coined and proved, who can disagree! In my opinion, call it whatever you may but, keywords are vital in organic search.

In bound links are crucial and you can never make the big money if you don't have some kind of investment.

If you want to get the word around you'd better be visible or have heck of a loud voice. A business needs a businessman. Architecture needs an architect. Medicine needs a doctor. The internet needs people. A website needs visitors.

How you bring them in is up to you. But it's not going to happen if they don't know you exist...

Best Regards,

Sajjid Manuel

Good post, useful way.

Heck Yeah!

Use your skills and your SEO will turn our flippin' SWEET.