10) its all about the Meta tagsThis is quite possibly the most pervasive and therefor harmful myth of all. "All you need," some say, "is the right meta tags—keywords, descriptions, and things like, REVISIT-AFTER, or CLASSIFICATION—then submit your site to the search engines." Many web developers and designers agree to optimize your site for you and do nothing more then meta tagging.
This concept is extremely flawed for various reasons. Most meta tags aren't very important, if they are even used by modern search engine algorithms at all anymore. Without proper placement of keywords in the content of the page, search engines won't even look at your website. Just links alone are far more valuable than meta tagging. 9) Multiple submissions improve your search positionThis is perhaps one of, if not THE, biggest scam in the SEO industry. They promise to submit your site to, anywhere from dozens to hundreds of, search engines. This is all but useless, and unfortunately, some of us learn this lesson the expensive way.
First of all, there are only 4 search engines, at best, that you really need to be concerned with anyways, Google, yahoo!, Bing, and Ask.com. Second, all the resubmitting in the world won't get you into the indexes any faster, and in some cases gets you blacklisted for spamming. 8) $10 gets your site a #1 listingA pervasive scam out in the SEO world is that for a $5 or $10 or even a $30 flat fee you can get your website listed on thousands of search engines and get a #1 position on Google and hold it.
I wish it were that easy, my job would be very cushy if it were. Unfortunately, search engine optimization, while occasionally it can be very easy, is usually very complicated. It take hours of tedious, mind numbing work to get your site ranked well, but after that you can look forward to week after week, tedious mind numbing work to keep it ranked well. 7) business partners, or friends, of Google can get your site a #1 rankPeriodically, emails go out saying that someone, or a company, has a 'special arrangement' with Google, and for a nominal fee they can get you into a high rank.
If you get this email, delete it. It's a scam. 6) pay per click is the only way to get a top rankTrue, PPC is a great marketing tool. But it is far from the only tool, and its not necessarily the best. A strongly optimized website with content, good keywords, content, linking campaigns, content, and content....did I mention content?....is of equal or greater value.
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5) high page rank=high rankingA common belief is that your google Page Rank is reflected directly in the search results. This simply is not true. While links from pages with high page ranks do carry more weight and can get your page bumped up in the results than, say a page with a rank of 1 or 2, a high Page Rank alone will not a good search make.
"For certain keywords a lower Page Rank page might outrank a higher Page Rank page, but the rankings don't specifically go in exact Page Rank order", says Matt McGee, search engine optimizer and writer for Search Engine Land. 4) snEak Your way to the topWhile black hat tricks like spamming, invisible keywords, or closed door sites, might get you ranked well at first there are serious repercussions. Google might just drop you ten pages, or 100 pages, but you run the risk of being booted off altogether.
Don't play dirty, it's risky and you WILL get caught. 3) All I need is a good landing pageA good landing page is important, but you should treat all your pages as landing pages. You can't assume that your visitors will come thought the same door. They may, or may not, see your home page first, or your contact page, or any other page that has links or has been crawled by Google.
2) once ranked, always rankedWrong! There's not much more to say, except that SEO is a continual process. At no point can you really sit back and say your done.
1) and finally, the coup de gras, "satisfaction guaranteed!"There is no such thing as a guaranteed position in a search result. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. While good SEO will continue to grow your site, results can take weeks and even months to see. Not to mention Google sometimes updates its algorithms and everything changes. Constant vigilance and know-how is essential.
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