What's your best hidden SEO secret?

[AaronSchinke]

So true. I still think we are secretly being productive in the down town. SEO is much more creative than people give it credit for. A little bit of everything involved!

[jdeb]

I've long held a business idea based on just this issue: hiring out henchmen who are paid to beat you up if you don't meet your deadlines. I'm sure a "gun to your head" option, charged hourly, could be arranged to suit your particular requirements.

[Shareef-Defrawi]

Stop hoarding the link juice and link out to related sites! Not so much a secret but something that is too often overlooked.

[IslandLogic70]

A website called SEOmoz.org. Shh.

[IPINGlobal54]

Remembering to keep an open mind to new ideas and concepts, testing them, and ensuring that I keep a mental note of both "do more of that" when they work and "not even if hell freezes over" when they don't (except when google changes something).

[WME]

Meet with your Client's face to face.

Once they can see how confident and passionate you are about SEO and their success, they will trust you further and be quicker to take on your ideas and recommendations.

[SEO-Doctor]

Social is..... (go test)

[glennfriesen]

Indeed. I tried to explain this truth to my employer once. He didn't get it. Now he's not my employer, and their site's traffic plummeted to 30% of what it was when I "spent half my day farting around".

Farting around isn't. It's accessing inspiration. It's competitive research. It's market research. It's natural link-building. It's accessing actionable information. It's expanding your mind to think outside the box of your perceptions. It's relationship-building. It's really important, even though it's difficult to forecast the ROI of such "R&D"

[glennfriesen]

I really like your list. Patience, consistency, and continual learning is the truly the core "skill set".

[seanmccauley]

That really is good advice. We do something similar with fortnightly meetings between customer advisors, web developers and SEO. Quite often CAs will have great ideas from the sharp end. www.pretavoir.co.uk

[PabloGV]

now that's being creative imho, thank you for sharing mate - sometimes I end up in the paranoia tunnel avoiding some obvious solutions -

[IPIM]

HI kaashif, what are your directory sites of choice, do you have a list that fits all such as dmoz types, then a list that fits a few and a list of niche or do you just formulate a new list for each project from scratch.

[JohnFCarroll]

Hi Donnie,

I agree about this idea being a great one.  I just signed up for something called "Google Engage" (it's part of google), where you take a few online classes and they give you 20 $105 Adwords vouchers for clients.  I imagine if you use the 20 and bring new customers they'll probably keep the vouchers coming.

I'm new to it so I can't say too much, but the extra $30 might get you the stats you need to convince a client.

[portalseo]

My best hidden SEO secret would be adding the websites phone number into the meta keywords for the homepage only. If you have a missed call from someone, most people just Google the number however if you have the number in your meta description/keywords it will display your homepage as opposed to your contact page. Once they are on the homepage they will more than likely check the contact us page then hopefully browse the website. I sometimes use an image for the contact number on the contact us page so it isnt picked up by the crawler. Its a pretty small secret but its one of mine

[kaizendc]

Flow

Read this book and it may help you on your quest....

http://www.amazon.ca/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0061339202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306272675&sr=8-1

[DonnieCooper]

Hey Nick, I didn't notice this until just now- sorry about that. 
Do you mean the testing process for keyword research in Adwords?
We'll research the most probable keywords for qualified visitors, and then either:
#1. test tons of exact match keywords to see real-world worth of each, or
#2. put a few very short broad keywords in, and then use the tool "see all search terms' once the campaign is over to see what the marketplace is actually searching for

Then of course, we optimize the site and create a link building plan for those phrases.

[DonnieCooper]

Hey John, you're right... an extra $30 does help. We usually add an Adwords budget into our proposals, so that  we can use more than just the $75. We do this because we feel like the best keyword research is pay per click advertising.

Google Engage is great, have you signed up for the Professionals Program?

[nimbledigit]

Just finished with a sales guy this morning that totally fit the onion piece. Funniest thing I've read in a loong time. Thanks.

[raxhuq]

Don't all nets have wholes mate?

[duncan274]

http://www.opencalais.com/   very interesting stuff to do with optimizing community contributions