Search engine optimization (SEO) is a part of online business. Do it well and you’ll be positioned to drive traffic and attract prospects and customers. Avoiding SEO myths and understanding the facts will help you start strong. Let’s take a look at seven SEO Myths and Facts.
Myth #1 I have to submit my site to a search engine for it to get listed.
Fact – You don’t submit your site to the search engines. They in fact index pages daily. What you do have to do is have content for them to index.
Myth #2 Meta tags matter.
Fact – Meta tags USED to matter but they no longer do. In fact, they haven’t for quite some time. You can put meta tags in your HTML code but it’s not necessary.
Myth #3 Trading links is a great idea because linking to my site boosts my page ranking.
Fact – Trading links with people isn’t as powerful as you might think. In fact, trading links or getting links from websites with poor reputations, or from websites that have nothing to do with your business niche, can hurt your page ranking. Focus on getting links from quality websites in your niche or industry. Link to others only when it’s appropriate and makes sense to do so.
Myth #4 I should work to increase the page ranking for my landing page first.
Fact – Not necessarily. The pages you focus on depend largely on your business model, target audience and your goals. You could have a website devoted to romance writing. However, it may be easier to gain visitors and the first spot on the page rankings for “Romance writing exercises.”
In that case you may want to bring people to your website based on those keywords and ideally you’d take them directly to your page devoted to romance writing exercises. Search engines evaluate each page independently which means you should focus on optimizing the page(s) that best help you reach your goals quickly.
Myth #5 All of my pages should be optimized for the search engines.
Fact – Not necessarily. For example, does your contact page, your privacy policy and your affiliate sign-up page need to be indexed for the search engines? Maybe, but maybe not. You can add a disallow tag to your code to prevent a page from being indexed.
Myth #6 If I link to high traffic and quality sites, it will help my page ranking.
Fact – It will help their page ranking, not yours. However, linking to authority sites can help your credibility and it generally won’t hurt your search engine rankings. Well, if it did, then I guess everyone would start doing the same and it would not make any difference. While linking to authority websites is a healthy habit, they don’t give you any added advantage.
Myth #7 The more the internal links my site has, the better.
Fact – Internal links are great for SEO; however, just linking for the sake of linking won’t do much. Keyword placement in the anchor text is extremely important for page ranking. You’ll also want to create a plan about which pages you’re going to focus your attention and your internal links on.
Armed with the proper knowledge you’ll be prepared to create a winning, and effective, search engine optimization strategy. Avoid the myths, stick with the facts and create a solid optimization plan for your website and strategic web pages. To your success!
Susan Myers is the CEO/Founder of SusanMyersBiz.com. She shows small business owners how having an awesome WordPress Site + Keywords + SEO + A Powerful Marketing Plan = RESULTS!
This powerful formula has a proven track record to produce more customers, as well as, increase profits in your business.
Susan has a Free ecourse "31 Marketing Tools To Grow Your Business" Stop giving your competition your money! Grab this ecourse now!
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