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The top 5 search engine optimization myths
Many things have been written about search engine optimization
techniques by many different search engine experts, so some
tenacious myths occur at regular intervals:
- Submitting my web site to search engines will bring
me visitors.
Submitting your web site to search engines doesn't automatically
bring visitors to your site. If your web site isn't optimized
for the search engines, chances are that your web site
will not be listed at all or somewhere at position 3,739
and beyond.
You must make sure that your web site is optimized for
your important keywords before submitting it to search
engines. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and your
money.
- I must submit my web site to 1,500 search engines.
There are only about 5 important international search
engines and the same amount of country specific search
engines that will bring you 99% of your search engine
visitors. Therefore, it's pointless to submit your site
to 1,500 "search engines".
Most of these sites are no search engines at all but
FFA (free for all) link pages that do nothing else but
adding your email address to a spam list. Focus on the
most important search engines that are really used by
web surfers.
Apart from that, if your web site has many incoming links,
you don't have to submit your web site at all. Search
engines are able to find your web site automatically through
the links and they will give it a higher value than a
directly submitted page because other people link to your
site.
- META tags will improve my search engine ranking.
Most search engines don't use the META Keywords tag anymore
to determine the ranking of a web site because they have
been abused too often in the past to trick search engines.
Inktomi is the last major crawler-based search engine
that supports the META Keywords tag.
"The META Keywords value is just one of many
factors in our ranking equation, and we've never given
too much weight to it." said Ken Norton, director
of product marketing for Inktomi's web search division.
The META Description tag is still useful because its
description will be displayed on the query result page
of some search engines.
Adding any other META tags (besides the META Robots tag)
such as the META Author tag, the META Copyright tag, the
META Language tag or the Dublin Core tags means nothing
to the major search engines and seems little worth your
time.
- Cloaking or doorway pages will get me a high ranking.
Techniques such as using hidden content, cloaking or
doorway pages used to work for some time and some techniques
might still work on some search engines.
Sooner or later, all major search engines will recognize
these techniques as spam. As soon as they find out that
you're trying to trick them, your web site will get in
trouble and maybe it will be even banned for a long time.
- Search engine optimization is not as good as traditional
advertising.
This is the opposite of reality. People who find your
web site through search engines are active and ready to
buy. Search engine traffic is very qualified because your
visitors performed searches with a purpose when they found
your site.
Search engine leads can be more targeted and more valuable
than traditional media advertising methods.
If done correctly, optimizing your web site for high search
engine rankings is the most cost-effective advertising method
for your business.
Therefore it's essential to make sure that your web site
is optimized for search engines and that it has many incoming
links.
If your web site is good in these two areas, you'll get many
targeted visitors from search engines and other web sites
without submitting your site to the search engines even once.
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