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Submitted by: Lauren Hobson
Want your website to be listed higher in the search engine ranking results? Unless your site is already sitting in the number one spot, Im sure the answer is yes who wouldnt want that? But Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated process, and there is so much mis-information and bad advice floating around, it can be difficult to know which tactics work, and which ones are nonsense.
Here is a list of five SEO myths that not only dont work, they can get your website banned by the search engines if you use them!
1. “The more times I use a keyword on a web page, the better.”
This myth can definitely get you in trouble with the search engines! Of course you should use a keyword in the content of your web page, but using it to many times on the same page can get you flagged for keyword spamming. Although there is no definitive rule on how much is too much, its generally thought that a keyword should have a density between 2% and 6%.
2. “Using the meta keyword tag will boost my rankings.”
Wrong the meta keyword tag is actually useless, and will not help your rankings one bit. There are other meta tags, however, like Title and Description, that are definitely used by the search engines in evaluating your web pages, but the keyword meta tag is not used at all for ranking web pages.
3. “Trading links or reciprocal links is a great way to build inbound links to my site.”
The search engines look for naturally occurring links coming from quality sites, and their algorithms are quite good at telling the difference between natural links and reciprocal and 3-way linking schemes. Build your inbound links naturally using standard techniques, because reciprocal links are discounted by the search engines, and link buying can get you banned altogether.
4. “Submitting my site to hundreds of search engines is a good way to improve my rankings.”
Not only is it unnecessary to submit your site to the search engines (the search engine spiders will discover your site on their own), submitting a site does not mean it will be listed in the search results. There are hundreds of factors that search engines consider when determining how to rank a site, but submission is not one of them.
5. “As the business owner, Im the best person to choose the keywords I want to be listed for.”
Although it may be appropriate for an owner to help select the list of seed words to use in SEO (seed words are the terms used to start the keyword research), you definitely want real-time data to tell you which keywords will perform the best for your business! For instance, you may think customers search for ABC widgets, but the data may show you that searchers actually typed in blue widgets or big blue widgets and never once typed in ABC widgets. Why would you waste time and effort optimizing for a term that nobody ever searches on?
We all want our business websites to show up in the top of the search results, but be careful what you think you know might actually end up hurting you!
About the Author: Lauren Hobson, President of Five Sparrows, LLC, has more than 16 years of experience in small business technology writing, marketing, and web site design and development. More at
fivesparrows.com
Source:
isnare.com
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