I think New Year’s resolutions are stupid. Usually, they are to lose weight, quit smoking, or do some other major lifestyle change. I’m not one for sticking to those. What about learning? I can resolve to learn more this next year. That’s something I can stick to. The more we learn in this business, the better our bank accounts look. Here is my rough list of 10 SEO-related resolutions for 2008.

1. Learn more about search marketing

By search marketing I mean affiliate marketing. I have a few affiliate sites right now, and they are under performing to say the least. With better landing pages, content and methods of getting people to the site I hope to turn those sites into solid producers.

2. Participate more in major social bookmarking sites

I have profiles on Digg, del.icio.us, and Reddit, but I rarely do more than vote for friend’s stories or others for personal gain. This coming year, I want to actually participate in the communities and become a more promenant user.

3. Participate more in less-known social bookmarking sites

Maybe participate is not the right word but give less-known social media sites an honest chance. Mixx was brand new this year and I has been a great community to get to know. I want to get more into the niche social bookmarking sites like DZone and LinkSlap, both or web developers. Open Source Food is a social site where users post their culinary creations and others vote on them.

4. Take on local clients

Local search optimization is not on my list of skills, yet. Simply because of lack of opportunity. My work site is an international organization, and local search isn’t a priority. Also, none of my projects pretain to a brick-and-mortar store. If I take on some local clients, I think I can cut my teeth on local search.

5. Document all those sweet spots to drop a link

How many times have we found a nice place to drop a link and we forget all about it when we work on the next project? Recently, I have been forcing myself to journal link building activities so I have it in the future. I hope to continue this. Eventually, it may become an ebook.

6. Increase my PPC knowledge

I have dabbled in Adwords, MSN and Yahoo but not that seriously. Basically, because I don’t do very much affiliate marketing. There is tons of money to be made, and I want to learn how to manage my spend while having enough money to get by until the affiliate checks come.

7. Write more articles

I run an article directory and know the power of article marketing, but I haven’t utilized it for myself as much as I could have. This past year, I have written about 10 articles for distribution. I’d like to increase that to 50 for this coming year.

8. Decrease my dependency on Google Adsense

A few of my sites generate income almost exclusively from Google’s Adsense. I know that it is a weak business model because it is not veryt reliable as a producer. Banner space and paid sponsorships with monthly terms my be the way to go.

9. Promote myself

This past year I have not done nearly as much as I should have to promote myself as an SEO. Most of the work I have recieved has been for my programming skills. I need to get into begin to represent myself as an SEO first and a developer second.

10. Interact more with other SEOs

Here’s my firest step for this item. You have a list of 10 SEO resolutions for the new year, make your post and link back to this one. I would like to see what everyone else would like to improve on in this next year.