Myth 1: Just the First Rank Matters
Many eBooks and other resources that business owners use
will place an significant emphasis on the need to be at the top of search
results, whether that be on Google Search, other engines, or even in places
like social media. But surveys have shown that people rather often will look at
other results and they will scroll down through the page. Being on top of a
second page, for example, can be quite useful for traffic. Also, search ranking
is only one part of the puzzle. Now Google places other results on the page
like social recommendations and local results as well, which means there are a
lot of more avenues open to you, and being in first place is no longer as critical
as it once was.
Myth 2: You can do SEO with no outside Help
Doing SEO simply means that you go after a set of techniques
and procedures to improve the possibility that web users will go to your site.
It is true that anyone can learn these techniques, and, if you are a web site
owner and you want to do your own SEO, then you can use up the time to learn
and apply those techniques. But SEO can be complex and touches many areas such
as marketing online, coding, technical aspects and PR skills. Most business
owners just do not have everything required to do a great job at SEO, and that
is why so many agencies exist that offer help. An IT worker or online marketer
is often not enough if you want truly good results.
Myth 3: META Tags are Very significant
It used to be that each page on your site needed Meta tags
in order to rank well. Those are small pieces of code that would offer Google a
list of keywords and a description. The search engine would use those to find
out what your web site was regarding. Now however, those do not have an effect
on your ranking at all. Both Google and Bing stopped caring about META tags awhile
back. However, Meta tags are not useless. For example, the description tag is
the text that frequently appears next to the link that shows up in the search
results, so it still serves a useful function.
Myth 4: Keyword-Rich Domain Names are ranked upper
Back in the dotcom days, it used to be that the URL you used
was very significant. Google placed a lot of importance on the domain name, and
if you might get a name that had your keyword in it, you would gain a big
advantage over other sites. This is why a lot of companies in the late 90′s bought
domain names for a lot of money. But now, the indexing process only looks at
the actual content of your pages, and not the domain name. The domain name is
still important, because people still get to see it, but it will not
give you a higher rank.
Myth 5: You have to suggest Your Site to Google or Other
Search Engines
All search engines used to have URL submission forms where
you might send your site to Google and others. In fact, they still do, but that
procedure is unnecessary. The crawlers that these engines use now are
sophisticated sufficient that any new site will be found in a matter of days,
if not hours. The only time you would have to worry about submitting your site
is if for some reason it was not indexed repeatedly after a couple of days.
Myth 6: Submitting a Sitemap will Boost Your Rankings
Google offers a webmaster interface and from there, you can
submit a sitemap, which is a XML file containing links to each page on your
site. Some site owners take the time to submit such a file every time they make
a change, but that is not needed. Submitting a sitemap does not modify your
rankings. All it does is add pages which may not have been indexed previously.
If your site is typical and has links to all your pages, then it is not needed.
Myth 7: SEO has nothing to perform with Social Media
Before the advent of Facebook and Twitter, SEO was the one
and only technique to get traffic in an natural way. But now, social media is all
over, and the line is quickly blurring between the two. While some marketers
still consider SEO and social media to be dissimilar beasts, the truth is that
they are very closely linked. For example, Google now places their own social
network, Google Plus, into its search results. If you can get enough important
people to talk about your product and link to your site, then their
recommendations will show up in any Google search result that their friends do.
This clearly affects SEO. On the flip side, Facebook has also entered search, by
recently introducing their Open Graph engine, which searches based on friends
and interests. So the two spheres are closely linked, and they are becoming
closer all the time.
Myth 8: Google does not examine CSS Files
The Google bot used to be fairly primitive and only saw
text, which is why many people concentrated on the text part of their web site.
But now that engine is very sophisticated and reads JavaScript, CSS, and more.
The crawler can certainly see whether your site’s presentation is appealing to
users or not. For example, if someone searches on a mobile device and you have
no mobile layout on your site, you may be missing out.
Myth 9: You need to modernize Your Home Page All the Time
Some people think that by updating their home page content
all the time they will rank higher, or by not updating it their ranking will
drop. In most cases that are not the case, since if you have a sales page that
offers a product, then there would be no motive to update that page unless
something about the product changes and Google expects that.
Myth 10: The H1 Header has Greater Value than the Rest of
Your Text
The arrangement of your page is seen by Google and other
engines, but you have to realize that many sites are structured in a different
way. As such, no one specific tag has more worth than another. An H1 tag is
simply a header that corresponds to a CSS entry in order for the user to see
your page a positive way. It does not make Google rank your page any
differently if you use H2 tags in its place, or if your keywords are frequently
in the text and not in an exact CSS tag.
Myth 11: Linking to Other Highly Ranked Sites Helps Your
Ranking
Some sites try to link to a lot of other high authority
sites in order to help their rankings, but that does not help at all. Google
uses PageRank to make a decision how your site will rank, and that algorithm is
based on how useful your site is to others, and as such it will only look at
how many other people link to you. Whether you link back to them is of no significance.
Otherwise, any site could rise to the top simply by linking to millions of
sites, which is simply not the case.
Myth 12: Using Automated SEO Methods is constantly Spam
Many people use automated SEO methods that do not fall into
the spam area. Many companies have very big sites and they use automated
scripts to do a lot of the grunt work of SEO. Whether or not a method is spammy
is based on what the result is, not on how automated it is.
Myth 13: PageRank is the Only Factor that Matters
The algorithm that Google uses to rank sites is PageRank,
which determines how valuable a site is to others. But according to Google,
search result rankings are also affected by hundreds of other inputs. Some of
these inputs are easy to see, like having your site being recommended by others
on Google Plus. This proves that not just PageRank matters. The company is
staying tight-lipped on how many inputs there are and how significant each is,
but it is clear that there is more going on than just PageRank. With that said
however, it is still generally believed that PageRank is the most vital factor,
and a PR10 page is always better than a PR3 page.
Myth 14: The Title Tag is hidden from Search Engines
Most of what Google sees on your site is the text that is noticeable
to users, such as what appears on the screen and is rendered in a web browser.
As such, it would be simple to think that the title is not picked up. However,
your title is very significant for SEO, because it is the text that appears on
the link people will click on. Not only is Google using it to help your
ranking, but people will also see it when they go to click on your site.
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