In the past few years, SEO and SEM became increasingly popular. More and more people turn to these methods of marketing to increase their website’s traffic. These marketing methods are in such big demand that many people are adventuring their way into the wonderful world of SEO. This in turn created a lot of false information about SEO, hence creating SEO myths. Every year there are new myths that arise and put doubts in webmasters minds. In this article, I will be giving you the top 10 most frequently talked about SEO myths for 2011.
SEO Myths, True Or False ?
Meta Keywords Tag
This has got to be the most popular SEO myth of all time and it keeps on coming back every year. Many people think that meta keywords tag are a must but it is a complete myth. The truth is that the meta keywords tag is completely diluted and is no longer being used. In the past it was used and highly relevant, however this technique was so abused that SERPs had no relevancy with the queries. Therefore, it was no longer part of the ranking methods.
Guaranteed Results
No SEO firm is able to guarantee you first place for all your keywords. You never know which problems you may encounter during your campaign. A SEO firm that guarantees you first place for all your keywords is not to be trusted. If you niche is very competitive and you’re going up against giants that have been in that industry for over 10 years, taking their position is nearly impossible, let’s not forget their buying power as well to do SEO as well. Although it is very possible, an SEO firm cannot confirm and guarantee that everything will go as planned in order for you to get top ranked for your keywords. I would have more trust in a SEO firm that could prove they’re able to do it, or that have proven results.
Page Rank
This is the most popular myth of 2011. A lot of people think because you have a high PR your rankings will be much better. The truth is that PR has absolutely nothing to do with your rankings, the higher your PR the more popular your website is on the net. Take Facebook for example, it has a PR10 but if you go on Google and type “social network”, Facebook is no where to be found. With this example, we learn that the PR is a popularity measure and not a ranking factor.
Social Networks
Many people believe that links from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are useless because they carry a “NoFollow” tag. This is completely false information and is a myth. Google themselves announced on December 2010 that Facebook “likes” and Twitter “tweets” do affect your rankings. Even though they have a “NoFollow” tag, the search engines still take notes of the amount of likes, tweets, and re-tweets a certain content on the web. The more tweets, likes, shares the content has, the more weight it carries.
Links From Social Networks Have No Weight ?
Search Engine Submission
This technique worked a few years back, but today it is completely useless. Don’t be fooled by those SEO firms that tell you they’ll do a search engine submission for your website for a few hundred bucks. Nowadays, search engines are much more complex and smarter than before, they continuously crawl the web to find new websites or web pages. Whether you submit your website or not, the search engines will find your website (if it is linked at least once from somewhere in order for the bot to end up on your website and index it).
Continuous Updates
A lot of people think that once they have reached the wanted rankings, no further work is needed. This is a big myth that people tend to believe but in order to maintain your website’s rankings you must bring continuous updates to your website or web page. Don’t forget that you are not the only one fighting over the top positions. People are constantly updating their websites in order to get top ranked and if you don’t keep up, there are big chances that you will be left behind. Adding fresh and new content will make sure you stay on the latest trends for your industry and in turn generate additional traffic to your website from long-tail keywords. Content generation is also a great way to get new natural backlinks when your content is shared. Always make sure you write new, unique and interesting content.
Paid Links Are Bad
Well yes paid links are bad if you follow the search engine’s guidelines but if you read further more, you realize that they have almost no way of detecting them. Paid links means that you pay a website to link back to yours and although this is unethical, if done properly,paid links can increase your rankings drastically. Usually when buying links, you buy them from a high PR website that is highly relevant to your niche. These types of links are the best ones and the ones search engines give the most weight.
Flash Content Is No Good
If we go back 3 years ago then yes this would have been true. Search engines had a very hard time reading flash content therefore if you have a website made out of flash, it was nearly impossible to be high ranked. However, as of June 2008, Google brought an updateto its algorithm which allowed the search engine to read, index, and crawl flash content. Nowadays, if you have flash content on your website, you have just as many chances of getting high ranked than if you didn’t have any flash content.
Keyword Density
This is a complete myth and doesn’t work at all. Do you really believe that a search engine will calculate the amount of keywords compared to the amount of words? If you do well you are wrong. A search engine doesn’t mind you repeating your keywords as many times as you want, just remember to always look natural and spam free. It’s not because your keyword density is lower than 5% that you will be high ranked. Concentrate on delivering fresh contentthat is relevant to your keywords and that is spam free.
Is Keyword Density A Myth ?
XML Sitemaps
Many people believe that submitting an XML sitemap will improve your rankings, however this is a myth. XML sitemaps are good if your whole website a complete mess and the search engine will have trouble crawling it. If your website has a good web structure and is crawler friendly, XML sitemaps are useless in your case.
Original Source: http://www.metaseo.com/top-10-seo-myths-2011/