Our SEO company has come up with a few simple rules of online marketing; essentially, they are the ten commandments of search engine optimization.  Here they are without further ado:

1.  Thou shall not keyword-stuff.  Awkward sentence but it gets the point across - stuffing your keywords into every line of text on your site is a cheap tactic that makes you look stupid.  Visitors who don’t understand SEO will think that you lack a first-grader’s grasp of the language.

2.  Thou shall not cloak.  Leave the black hat techniques to the shady SEO companies (the SEO hares, so to speak).

3.  Thou shall not use hidden text.  Another tactic best left to the less ethical SEO consultants, especially given that it is a quick route to getting banned.

4.  Thou shall create compelling content.  Be interesting, be useful, be informative - these things all get users coming back and more importantly converting, as well getting other sites to link to yours.

5.  Thou shall stay out of the link farms.  Getting a backlink from PR 2 directory that links to about a million other websites is a pointless endeavor that will do you no SEO favors in the end, especially if that directory ends up getting penalized by the search engines (you don’t want an inbound link from a “bad neighborhood, after all).

6.  Thou shall update often. Search engines love fresh, relevant content, so give it to them in the form of consistent new pages, articles, and blog posts.

7.  Thou shall be social.  Using social media to network, share your best stuff, and generate backlinks is a fantastic idea, as long as you are a genuine participant who doesn’t just spam their buddies (you know who you are).

8.  Thou shall be creative with content.  When it comes to link-building and online marketing, creativity (not content) is king.  Coming up with unusual blog posts, amazing or humorous viral content, or otherwise creative content will eventually result in natural backlinks - and those are by far the best kind.

9.  Thou shall evaluate (constantly).  Tracking your stats and performance and adjusting your strategy is the key to success.  After all, the web changes constantly and you’ve got to keep on top of it - and ahead of it - in order to stay on the front page of the SERPs.

10.  Thou shall focus on users first.  The most important aspect of your web development process/web presence are your users - they are why you are in business in the first place!  Optimize your site and marketing strategy for your visitors first (and the search engines second) and you will reap the conversion rewards.

What do you consider the most essential rules for online marketing and SEO?