Inside The Mind Of An Internet Marketer

There are many myths about Search Engine Optimization. Here are just some of those SEO myths which are totally FALSE along with some SEO truths…

Tags
You must have keyword-rich page URLs - FALSE
You must have a keyword-rich domain - FALSE
Heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.) - FALSE
Using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings - FALSE
You need to use keywords in meta keyword tags - FALSE
Meta keywords must be included in page content - FALSE

TRUE: It’s actually far better if you use the keyword meta tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don’t have in your pages.

Submitting, Crawling & Indexing
You need to submit URLs to engines - FALSE
You need a Google Sitemap - FALSE
You need to update your site regularly - FALSE
Regular spidering helps ranking - FALSE
You need multiple sites - FALSE
You need doorway pages - FALSE

TRUE: Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed. The majority of sites don’t need a sitemap.

Page Content
Pages must contain a certain number of words - FALSE
You need to use bold or italic text on your keywords - FALSE
You must use a specific keyword density - FALSE
You must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page - FALSE
You must optimize for long-tail keywords - FALSE
Duplicate content will get your site penalized - FALSE

TRUE: There is no specific page length that pleases search engines. Keyword density tools are not needed. Don’t optimize a page for single keywords or phrases. Rather, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related. That way your page copy reads better than repeating one phrase many times. 

Site Design
Your HTML code must validate to W3C - FALSE
Your navigation must be text links not images - FALSE
You can’t use Flash - FALSE
You can’t use Javascript code - FALSE

TRUE: Not even Google.com validates to W3C! Graphical navigation is okay as long as you use ALT tags effectively. It’s okay to use Flash in moderation. Use it as one element on your page but don’t have the site completely in Flash. Javascript has legitimate uses but you must ensure you provide alternative routes for spiders where Javascript doesn’t allow them to follow.

Pay Per Click
PPC ads will help organic rankings - FALSE
PPC ads will hurt organic rankings - FALSE

Link Building
Google’s link: command is accurate - FALSE
Reciprocal links don’t count - FALSE
Pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results - FALSE
You must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings - FALSE
Google Toolbar PageRank is accurate - FALSE

TRUE: The Google link: command is not very useful. Use Google Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead. Reciprocal links from the right sites are good and can be very helpful. Pages are NOT ranked in PageRank order, try a few searches and check the top 10 sites. Chances are they don’t appear in PageRank order. Google Toolbar PageRank is not accurate, ignore it!

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