Don't be creative and don't be lazy in SEO.

More content from this talk (and beyond):

Don't be creative. Creative people are not the ones who should be driving the SEO on a web site. The content experts should instead. Creative people have an innate need to try new things and push the envelope. This isn't what you want. Find the winning play and keep repeating it. Make small tweaks instead of delving into wild tangents. One place people used to be creative which is no longer as applicable is in link building. From 2004 to 2009 these should have been your SEO priorities from highest priority to lowest priority:

make the website's pages accessible to engines
build links to individual URLs for higher rankings
optimize on-page keyword usage/targeting
create content people want to consume and share
optimize metadata, schema, rich snippets, etc.

This is not the modern reality however (as we will see momentarily). Look at analytics for what people are looking for in their search results. If you have a search engine at your own site, record what people search for and, in particular, pay attention to those search results for which no hits are being matched. What isn't the public finding at your site? You may need to try to target the appropriate search engine for your market. Google has upwards of sixty percent of the search traffic in the United States, but, beyond that, it has nearly exclusive rights in some other nations. Yahoo controls Japan. YouTube is the second most trafficked search engine in the United States. Do not get creative with a cluster bomb strategy across numerous engines. If you think of the typical American male grocery store shopping behavior of: get in, get what you want, get out ...well, this logic is what everyone thinks when searching. Cater to it. Don't complicate it. The online public will spend time browsing and lollygagging in other venues, but not in search. Creative people should be channeled towards the other venues, not search. PR peeps are a little better suited to SEO than creative types, but ultimately content is king not hype and SEO marketers should be filling their own niche, you know?

 
 

Don't be lazy. Laziness will take you down a black hole. If you get a gym membership you will probably want to have it in your head to go to the gym on a regular basis. If you just plan to go to the gym when you feel like it you won't be too productive there. The same is true for SEO. Keep a calendar in the name of up-keeping your content. If you read a few articles a day related to your business, write a paragraph on your thoughts once every three days and reference the articles in your copy. This is all you need for a blog posting. Overall, these should be your SEO priorities from highest priority to lowest priority:

create content people want to consume and share
make the website's pages accessible to engines
optimize on-page keyword usage/targeting
optimize metadata, schema, rich snippets, etc.
build links to individual URLs for higher rankings

Google has done away with its tool for gauging the viability of would be search terms, and most of the other major search engines have either followed suit or let their widget fall into disrepair. There is a not-free player in this space called Human Discovery, but for the most part you will need to learn to walk without this crutch going forward. Type in would-be search terms into Google itself and see how the autocomplete behaves. This is the new (marginally opaque) Ouija Board. Be green, be thrifty, and be rich. Being green and thrifty means recycling content as suggested above and also retweeting and acknowledging those who interact with you in kind. Be rich means not being too lazy to use images, video, news, etc. Seventy percent of all search results come from blended search anymore in lieu of a "Google Classic" approach. Don't be lazy in crafting content. Ask yourself: How will success be measured, am I on topic, and is it best to spend time spinning new content or reinforcing existing content? Anyways... you're up. Pull up your blog. It's time to start jaw-flapping ...with something substantive to say.