You could follow random SEO advice and rely on tricks and rumors. Or you could take a rational approach to SEO.
If you throw a rock in any direction in a large city, odds are high you hit a self-proclaimed “SEO guru” in the head. They “know” (without any way to prove it) the perfect keyword densities and link formats and everything else about SEO. I’m not an SEO guru. But you can approach SEO in a purely rational way:
If I were Google, how would I work?
Google is made by people—rational people I suppose. So, if you think about how search engine rankings work rationally, you should end up with similar logic. I know it sometimes feels like they do irrational choices (like the “Panda” update that hit hard many quality sites). But I’m sure they at least attempt to think rationally the big question: How to rank webpages?
Here’s a rational approach to SEO, which should work if the search engines are rational ;)