Every specialised sector has its own set of myths. “Knowledge” that people within the SEO world take to be true is no different. Unfortunately we are more than likely to succumb to these myths as tactics that may have worked last year, month or week might not hold as much relevance today. Below we have a list of some of our Favourite SEO Myths:

1 - Submitting to the search engines is the only way to get your site listed.

2 - Meta tags are vital to SEO.

3 - Filling your alt text with keywords will ensure you decent ranking results.

4 - Search Engine Rankings are the only metric worth measuring.

5 - There’s a faultless keyword density that if you use on your site will result in excellent ranking results.

6 - Your home page has to contain every one of your keywords.

7 - You have to put keywords in your headline in order for your page to rank well.

8 - Not Using <H1> tags will prevent you from achieving top placement.

9 - More traffic always leads to sales.

10 - SEO executives are too expensive.

11 - SEO is all about secret tactics and tricks that only the “A list SEO’s” know about.

12 - The more links you have the better the ranking result.

13 - Google owes you a number 1 listing because you’ve followed their guidelines.

14 - Search Engine Optimization is a collection of tricks to fool search engines.

15 - SEO requires continual manipulation in order to keep up with changes in the search engines’ ranking algorithms.

16 - SEO is straightforward to learn.

17 - The only goal of SEO is to be number one in Google.

We often hear about social bookmarking and its future importance to SEO but what exactly is it? There are many different sites who allow their users to save/organize and manage the bookmarks to their favourite sites. These are then made available publicly so that other users can check out peoples favourite or most popular bookmarks.

These bookmarks are generally saved as tags which can then be found when someone searches for that particular sector. I.E. Someone searching for “online seo blog” will come across other users favourite bookmarks to do with online seo blogs. Most social bookmarking sites also provide a feed that will show a user when a friend of theirs has added a new bookmark so that they can then check it out. Traffic wise for a site you can obviously see the benefits of new people being given access to your site every day but is there really much benefit SEO wise?

There is now, thanks to Mister Wong. Already known as an authority site in the social bookmarking world, Mister Wong has approximately 4 million visitors every month looking to use their excellent bookmarking service. As well as being able to access your bookmarks wherever you are in the world there are benefits to help you sites rankings. Mister Wong is a PR 8 site and offers do follow links this will obviously be beneficial when it comes to link building. But beware, use sparingly otherwise you might get banned!

For more info on Social Bookmarking check out this video.

The expectation from clients of seeing top ten results in Google and Yahoo within a short space of time can be demoralizing for most SEO executives. I mean you’ve only got to make vast onsite changes as well as start link building and viral marketing campaigns…

The problem is how do you explain to a client that SEO rarely works quickly? Results aren’t visible within hours and recent links may take a while to activate. Everyone of us working in SEO understand that clients want to see positive changes as soon as possible but next time you are getting it in the neck for not “producing the expected results” remember and pass on these details to keep their business.

Search engines take time to re-crawl sites – Authority sites that are used by millions daily won’t be troubled as much but can still take days or weeks to be crawled. Sites that are slightly lower in Google’s “have to crawl” list can take up to 4 months before all of the sites pages have been fully indexed.

Linked sites need to be crawled too! – Sites that you are linking with will need to be crawled by Google too. Unless you are linking with authority sites (in which well done!) you will have to be patient to experience the fruits of you labour.

Search engines reward patience – Google and Yahoo quickly learnt that black hat link building is often made for the short term whilst good, quality links last. This will see a links power/worth increase over time thus making your site a trustworthy one. New sites and domains suffer with trust issues especially with Google but over time you will see your links having a positive effect on your rankings.

Patience is one of the most important qualities when it comes to SEO, particularly whilst we are going through tough economic times. It is advised that you give a good 3-4 months work on a client’s site before expecting the positive results to roll in.

Here’s an oldie but a goodie, ever wondered how to check what pages on your site carry the most link juice for the main search engines? Well wonder no more, below is an example of how you can find your strongest pages on Google and Yahoo.

In Google and/or Yahoo simply type in site:addyourwebsitehere.com inurl:www and it will give you results as follows for our online seo blog - Google Results, Yahoo Results

Both results will probably vary due to their respective algorithms but it should give you an idea on which pages have more juice so that you can redirect it to pages that need it.

LSI is Latent Semantic Indexing.

This system is already being used in some forms by Google and is something that will become ever more important in its algorithm once the technology is advanced enough to use it. Sites that use LSI (and are coincidentally dominating search results…) include ESPN.com and Wikipedia.

The Latent Semantic Indexing system will hopefully take SEO to a different level by using a database system that will select certain keywords to link with one another. For example a keyword like “SEO” will be commonly found with words like search engine, ranking, website, services, internet marketing etc.

E.g. SEO –> Search Engine

This LSI technology will then measure page strength by the amount of related words that are in the content or on the page for your selected keyword. E.g. a site may rank higher in the SERP’s if its pages contain the correct related keyword(s). This means that each of your keywords will have their own “magic words” that you should add to optimise your site properly.
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Here at South West SEO we are whiter than white but if you want to risk playing with the dark arts here are some techniques that could get you banned.

1 - Using Hidden Text – This technique will see you get you in hot water very quickly. Usually it will involve white text put onto a white background, this will certainly get your site blacklisted.

2 - Copying content – Stealing other sites content and using it on your own will get you in deep trouble it’s as simple as that. If you want to remain in Google’s good books write your own!

3 - Keyword Stuffing – We all want our specific keywords to rank highly but overusing your keyword in your content will see you penalised. For example: Our Keyword here is one of the finest Keyword here in the market. If you need Keyword here information visit Keyword here.com for more info. This is the right way to go if you want your site blacklisted.

4 - Hidden Links – There are many website owners out there who think that they can use hidden links and that Google won’t notice. Try and hide a one square pixel on your page and the Googlebots will find you.

5 - Cloaking – A Black hat SEO technique that shows the user one page and Google another. When a sites user is found to be a googlebot (or other search engine spider) a server side script will send it a separate version of the web page. This page will contain different information to the one seen by a human user thus tricking the search engine into thinking the page is better than it really is. There are plenty of programs out there that can help you do this but if you do you’re asking to be banned.