Michael Martinez paints an admittedly arrogant picture of Advanced SEO tactics. Certainly he has gotten his hands dirty in the search optimization business, but his advice is more like Zen gardening than in the trenches warfare.

Mr. Martinez’s guide to Advanced SEO:

Advanced SEO plans for a minimum of 12 months (or 4 seasons)

No problem there I absolutely see how you can plan in advance for the changes of 3 major English search engines and a dozen national engines. Italics mean sarcasm right? Joking aside that is not about optimization, it is about metrics. An intermediate search marketer is looking at the horizon saying “We take a dip right there every year,” how do we compensate. An advanced marketer thinks how do we make the dip not matter. How do we make content that is strong in the next revision of the engines.

Advanced SEO is driven by query trend analysis (rather than keyword analysis)

Interesting, are you saying that I should look to see how search volume changes over the year? That’s not very advanced. I would amend this to “driven by query production analysis,” how — and why — are new queries introduced.

Advanced SEO focuses on building resources (rather than building links or content)

Okay that is Zen, I can dig it. What is a resource? It is reusable, it is growable.

Advanced SEO shapes Web sites (rather than optimizing them) to achieve specific results

Shaping websites part of what I like about Michael is that he is a structuralist. Pretty for the search engine is like a cut flower — everyday it is dying a little. When you set out to achieve results look to the future, how will your next pieces of content rank? Or your next changes? Well built beats well optimized.

Advanced SEO pays equal attention to all the major search engines, not just Google

No advanced search ignores the major search engines. Search is a channel, it is not an end. It doesn’t matter how they come to you if you seed them with the right terms to come back. Advanced means leading queries, not following them.

Advanced SEO prefers custom-designed tools and tool sets to the stuff you find on the Web

The only competitive advantage you have is the advantage no one knows you have. A+, but for one thing; if you can’t do it right without your personal “tool” you are still limited. Change tool for process, reinventing the tools that are available is a waste of our time. If you can make it better do, if you can’t make it better use it and combine it with something more. Great tools can’t make great builders.

Advanced SEO uses metrics that have not yet been implemented in analytics software

Too true. Avinash Kaushik put out a very comprehensive post on the fragility of web analytics. So, what should you be measuring? It depends. What should I be measuring? I should be measuring the difference between channels.

I guess I now approve Michael’s message, in my own arrogant fashion.

The most important message that you can take from SEO-Theory is that the split between the intermediate and the advanced SEO is accepting that advanced organic search is an art, not a science.