Gaping Void, best known for hilarious back-of-business-card cartoons, posted an SEO Manifesto.

My favorite points:

2. It’s much easier to plan a website than to retrofit it.

Understanding fundamentals makes it much more valuable when you hire a consultant or agency.

I can’t tell you how many clients of mine have had to rebuild their sites because we weren’t involved in initial site construction. Plan for SEO as you build your site. Don’t tack it on to the site afterwards.

5. Any marketing decision impacts search engine rankings – and vice versa

TV, radio, print and other ads can all be used for attracting links.

Want to use all flash as the homepage? Pick a different school of thought.

Decisions you make about print ads, PR, other advertising and yes, use of Flash will all impact your SEO. Brides.com, one of our clients, was anchored to the second page of Google. Why? Partly because their home page was still 90% Flash. We changed that, and a few other things, and they’re #3 for ‘wedding dresses’ now.

The whole manifesto is a great read. I’d add a #11, though:

11. SEO is not an IT function.

Your IT department can’t take the lead in search engine optimization, and it’s not fair to ask them to do it. They’re already slammed. SEO is a marketing function that should permeate all of your organization’s communications efforts. Approaching it any other way guarantees sub-par results.

Check it out here.