Link Building Blog, News and Articles - Textlinkbrokers.com/blog

Blog Homepage Text link Ads : Category - Beginner SEO

This is Part 2 of 2 on a topic I came across at cre8asiteforums.com that opens the doors to discussion on some popular SEO myths.

In this article I look at the remaining “myths” to give you my take on these issues.

In yesterday’s article, I began looking at these myths individually.  Today I continue where I left off.

There is a sandbox

Myth.  While there is some sort of delay happening, I don’t think it’s the default for all new sites.  Therefore how can there be a sandbox?

In this previous article I discussed the sandbox and it’s liklihood.

While there is something there, it’s not a “sandbox.”

There are thousands of search engines to submit your site to

This is not a myth.  There are lots of different engines and directories you could submit to.  The question is, do you need to.

In reality there are 5 engines to concern yourself with: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask Jeeves and AOL.  These 5 will drive 99% of your search engine traffic.

Even then you don’t need to submit to any of them.  They prefer to find your site on their own through links to your site.

You need to submit your site to the major search engines

I’ve already addressed this one above. It is a myth because you don’t need to submit.  In fact my experience shows that you shouldn’t submit.  You should link to your site via a highly placed directory such as the Yahoo! Or DMOZ directories and wait for the crawl to happen on its own.

Resubmitting sites to search engines helps your site get crawled more frequently

Total myth.  In fact resubmitting only hurts you.  The search engines all use a queuing system where new submissions are added to the bottom of the list.  If your site is high up in the queue and you resubmit it, it gets moved back to the bottom.

Appearing in DMOZ is essential to high rankings

This is a part myth.  While a DMOZ listing can help your rankings, it isn’t the only factor that affects rankings.

In my experience sites do receive a boost in rankings from the listing because they have a listing in a high PageRank category.  This translates into increased link popularity which can help improve rankings.

High rankings are the aim of SEO

If you deal with clients on a daily basis this may seem fact.  However the true aim of SEO should be part high rankings and part improved conversions.  Therefore this is also a part myth.

If high rankings was the goal, I could rank any site for some obscure batch of phrases that aren’t going to drive any traffic.  Does that mean I’ve done my job?  Sure I can print out a ranking report showing thousands of #1 rankings, but if the client isn’t seeing any appreciable increase in traffic and sales what good are those rankings.

Ideally, the site needs to rank highly AND convert browsers into buyers.

Optimizing for specific keyword phrases is the goal of SEO

While this is usually where one starts an SEO campaign you will again see that this isn’t the end of the campaign, merely one aspect of it.  Another part myth.

While you may start with a key phrase analysis and you will optimize for a chosen list of words, in truth your site will rank for thousands of other phrases you haven’t considered.  These other phrases are generally what drives traffic to your site.  So while you will optimize for specific words, don’t focus on those to the detriment of other terms which could be great traffic generators.

You shouldn’t optimize a site for terms that are too broad or too narrow

Myth.  Why not shoot for the stars with broad terms?  People still search for them.  Similarly, narrow terms are usually the highly converting terms.

Look at it this way, next time you do a search, consider how many queries you generate to get the result you want.  Chances are it’s more than one.  Most likely it’s closer to 4 or 5.

Now how valuable would it be to your site to at least appear in those 4 or 5 searches?  Do you think it would help your brand at all?  Of course it will.  Therefore you should consider all your keyword options.

Once you’ve achieved a top ranking with a page, you should adopt a hand’s off approach to that page

Definite myth.  SEO is not a hands off thing – even after you’ve achieved your rankings you have to maintain them.  That means constant refinement.  Remember that if you’ve ousted a competitor from a top spot, he’s going to redouble his efforts to get it back.  That means you have to counteract his changes by improving yours.

Hidden links or text in a page can get your page ranked higher

This isn’t necessarily a myth.  While I would recommend against using such tactics, they have been known to help some sites achieve high rankings.

However, if your competitors catch on and report you to the spam police you can expect an email warning your to clean up your act for fear of removal.

Software, which compares your use of keyword phrases in titles, headlines, meta tags, etc., with pages that rank highly for those terms can help you rank highly for those phrases

Also myth.  In fact, if you look at a recent Google patent you can see how such software could actually harm your rankings.

This is because Google is using some form of click tracking.  They are then comparing clicks to searches to see what’s driving traffic.  If sites that rank highly don’t get clicks they start to move down in favor of other sites which might get more clicks.

If there are 10 sites in the top 10 all using rank checking tools, and they are getting checked on a regular basis, how long would it take for Google to realize that there are all these searches where specific domains appear but they aren’t getting clicked on (because the software only checks rank – it doesn’t click through)?  And what will Google do about that? I’ll leave the answer up to you.

Participating in pay-per-click or paid impression programs on the search engines can help or harm your search rankings

This is a myth now, but could become reality.  This is because, as I mentioned above, engines like Google are measuring click through traffic.  If your site starts to get higher clicks than your competitors, regardless of source, don’t you thing Google is going to use that to modify the rankings?  I would expect so.

Search engines don’t index dynamic sites

Myth.  However this one comes with a caveat.  While search engines do index dynamic sites, they tend to rank worse than static sites.

The engines just seem to prefer static sites.  Therefore if you have a dynamic site I’d recommend the use of a URL rewriter and some basic optimization to help improve its rankings.