Myth 1. Meta tags
are vital
There are still people
and companies who will assure you that the way to optimise
your site is to load the meta tags with keywords. The
reason they give is: "Meta
tags will
make all the difference to your web site" or "companies'
web sites were placed on top because of meta
tags". This
may have been true many years ago when the internet
was young, because meta
tags were
originally incorporated into a site to
help search engines discover what the site was all
about. However, it didn't take very
long before unscrupulous people found a way to manipulate
the system.
These people wrote in hundreds
of keywords into the meta tag in
an attempt to trick the search engines into ranking the
site highly for something the site was not about. This
initially did work, but the search engines soon realised
that their searches were producing irrelevant results.
Because of this abuse most
of the major search engines place absolutely no importance
in the presence of meta tags.
However it is still
work putting meta tags into your site, but only as a way
of keeping track on how well your targeted keywords
and phrases are doing when you run a ranking report.
Myth 2. You need
to submit your site regularly to 1000's of search engines
achieve high rankings
First
things first. There are NOT 1000's of search
engines worth submitting to. There are only about
a dozen main search engines and any relevant (to your
site) directories. These provide about 97% of
all the search results in the world.
Many
businesses are still being spammed on a daily basis
from companies that offer a monthly
submittal service for a small monthly fee. The majority
of these search engines virtually unknown, and therefore
completely useless in your bid to get recognised.
On top of this, almost all of the
major search engines and directories are
programmed to ignore automated
submissions and require that you to submit your whole
web site by hand.
The
other thing to remember is that some search
engines, Google especially, will actually downgrade
a site when it is resubmitted every month. It is against Google's rules to
submit more than once for each page of a site. Some sites
have even been totally banned from the Google engine, because of excessive
monthly re-submittals.
Myth 3. Doorway and gateway pages
will help with my site optimisation
Doorway
and gateway pages have always been prohibited
on most major Internet search engines. However, that
has not prevented certain individuals and some companies
from using doorway or gateway pages. In
fact, some are still illegally using them, in effect
creating unwanted spam in the search engines.
How
doorway and gateway pages are created
Some search engine firms promise to deliver high
rankings using the sure fire method of gateway
pages. The way they do this is by creating pages
that are completely independent of your current
pages These pages are built to present information
to the search engine spiders whilst obscuring it
from human viewers, which they load with certain
keyword phrases that, according to them, should
direct more traffic to your site. The
purpose of doorway pages is to present the spider with
the format it needs for optimum rankings while presenting
a more appropriate version to human viewers.
Please be aware that these
pages are illegal and if you are found using them, which
you most assuredly will, then you could find your site
being banned from the search engines at worst and at
best being dropped so low in the rankings, you might
as well not be there.
Myth 4. Guaranteed search engine
positioning or your money back
If a company guarantees your site will have a top position
in Google run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.
Guarantees are worthless in search engine
positioning because outcomes are always unpredictable and
ever-changing. Credible
search engine companies can demonstrate results from past
performances but can never guarantee future results.
Unfortunately,
this does not stop a large number of the SEO firms
offering guaranteed search engine positions to potential
clients. Sometimes to achieve these so called top positions,
they submit doorway pages to the search engines.
If one such doorway page gets a top position, even if
only for a few days, the SEO firm has fulfilled its end
of the contract. Remember however that this is
a 'spammy' practice that will result in your site getting
penalised or banned altogether.
More myths to be added soon
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