SEO Myths

Similar to people and culture, Search Engine Optimization do have myths as well .I was looking through an SEO forum once when I came across a post that asks if web sites need to be updated frequently to optimize traffic. My first thought was, of course because the World Wide Web is constantly changing, web sites have to the updated to keep the content fresh as search engines like fresh and frequently updated content.

There was a post in that thread though that says frequent updates in web sites increases its crawl rate but not its ranking. If the site doesn’t need change, its best to leave it untouched. This frequent web site update was one of the few myths I found out upon searching the web. There are others more.

Here are they:

Myth # 1. Submitting your URL to search engines is a must.

This is an old school SEO rule. It may have worked years ago, but today it’s no longer necessary to submit sites to search engines. If you start external link building then your web site will be automatically indexed by search engines sooner or later. However it is necessary to submit your URL to at least Google, Yahoo and MSN. By submitting your URL to Google and Yahoo you can take advantage of their tools such as Google Webmaster Tool, Yahoo Site Explorer etc.

Myth # 2. The more times the keyword is repeated, the higher the web site will rank.

Now, this is something you need to look into. Search engine uses different algorithms that have different factors for ranking sites. The best keyword density would be 3-15%. Any higher than that and the search engine will penalize your site. This measure was adopted by various search engines to stop spammer spamming the keywords.

Myth # 3. Put hidden links in your pages to rank higher.

Stuffing hidden links in pages will only get your site penalized or worst banned. Some search engines will label your site as spam and keep it off its pages for good. The links in your web site shall be in same colour as background colour of pages. This is considered as spamming, specially by Google.

Myth # 4. Contents need to be 250 words at all times.

I used to follow this rule in the past. I made sure that all contents in my web site were 250 words in length. When my friend saw what I was doing he told me I was following a silly rule. Short copies or long copies rank well in search engines. So, it doesn’t matter how long my copies are as long as it is incorporated with the right keywords. It is the quality of relevant content which counts. You may not necessarily have all the pages in your web site with 250 words. A typical example is contact us page which would be hard to populate with any content than your telephone numbers and e-mails. But for pages which are informative try to have as much content as possible.

It is also good idea to spread long content into additional pages and provide navigation to these pages from each other.

Myth # 5. Adding meta tags will help rank your site.

Meta tags used to be very important element in the past for indexing and ranking which is no more the case. However still there are search engines which give importance to meta tags such as keywords and description.

I would recommend to have at least keywords and description meta tags on all of your web pages which shall be relevant to the pages and shall not be spammed.

There are people who go on saying that meta tags are completely redundant which is not the case.

There are just some of the many SEO myths that I have compiled here. They are all not true all the time, but some sites claim that these myths have work for them. If you decide to follow these myths, test it many times first. Remember, they may not always work. So, be careful in practicing them.