SEO MYTHS AND FACTS

SEO MYTHS AND FACTS

 "We always fear what we don't understand." And when we don't understand, we lie. In this chapter, we take a look at some of the most common misleading opinions floating around about SEO and related techniques.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has come a long way since its way to optimize your website was to be the birth, when the best owner of the website that shouted the loudest. In its formative years, SEO had an "anything goes" feel about it, with spammy backlinking going overboard with keywords, and often a grossly excessive amount of tags.

Slower development cycles meant that it took several months for search engines to roll out updates to their search algorithms, this meant that imperfect practices lasted much longer back then. Between the years 2000 and 2002, Google implemented just 2 updates their Search Engine In comparison, Google had 5 updates in 2015 alone and has already rolled out 4 updates in 2016. Search engines like Exact revolutionized search engines by cataloging information back in 1993. Then came Yahoo and Google.

They took it upon themselves to better index and optimize search results, and they succeeded. One of them, of course, did so in spectacular fashion and went on to become a truly global phenomenon that is arguably changing the world harder and faster than any other company in the world. Here are the most common misconceptions in the world of SEO.

1) SEO techniques are frauds, and they don't work 

No. Slow down. SEO is a legitimate way to increase the visibility of your website. The key is to avoid all "black-hat" practices cheap tricks that make you the bad guy on the Internet. And everyone hates a bad guy on the Internet.

The reason for this myth is the existence of innumerable companies that are devoted to scamming websites with false promises using a Pre-packaged SEO solution'. Back in the infancy of the Internet, it was possible to see long-term results by "blasting" links pointing your website to thousands of others. Nowadays such practices are not just avoided but aggressively penalized Google might permanently stop your website from appearing their search results, even if the query is full of keywords associated with your website.

Beware also services that promise manual submissions and "guaranteed" number one ranking. Instead, it's a good idea to do your research, and if you do want to purchase a service that does, check to see if they are legitimate. If you don't ice, SEO is a simple enough thing to do if you follow the right habits value quality over quantity, promote your site using the plethora matter. SEO work and they'll continue to work as long are the masters of the Internet.

2) More links are better than more content 

Link building is still an essential part of SEO. In fact, Searchmetrics, a company that sells SEO tools ranks it as the 4th most important criteria for success in optimization. It stands above Social Media Marketing, and just below Content, User Experience, and Technical.

There is an important caveat in these rankings and it stems from the Panda and Penguin updates that Google made in 2013 (check Chapter for more about those). The Panda update is basically a filter that is used to sort the wheat from the chaff-content quality wise and then used as a parameter to punish the chaff. Similarly, Penguin sorts bad linking techniques and over the use of keywords. With these updates, the entire way of building links has changed with an increased focus on quality, rather than quantity.

If you have the resources to hire either link building service or a content writer, it is advisable to employ the latter solely because link builders seldom care about the quality of links. Having relevant and diverse links with quality content leads to guest posts on other websites, content for own websites, blogs, and other entities, which increase the number of links over time.


3) The ranking is all important, and SEos won't lead to a #1 ranking 

Let's start original content, keywords, and smart backlinking, it is definitely possible. To build or improve your keyword strategy, you need to look no further than Google AdWords, which gives great insights into what works and what doesn't. Another good way to improve your ranking is to focus on meta descriptors that you think would attract a large number of viewers. Now for the fetishization of ranking.

A strong correlation, between result ranks and the traffic that the link gathers, does exist, and to an extent is inevitable. However, recent studies show that ranking is not the kind of traffic, as it used to be. With meta descriptions and keywords gaining more prominence, search result ranking has taken a back seat. It has also been shown that users favor the top three listings on the first search page.

What is surprising is that subsequent pages show a similar number of clicks if the entries are at the top end of the page. There are several relevant causes here, chief amongst which is keyword strategy. Without the good strategy, you will end ranking for irrelevant keywords. Also, attractive meta descriptions are a game changer if they appeal to your target audience. If you're concerned about Google dismissing meta descriptions entirely when it comes to search rankings, and you would be right to do so.

Here, it's important to bring out a crucial distinction between ranking and traffic. So ensure you have an attractive meta description, use the optimum keyword strategy, and stop worrying about the ranking you have.

4) SEO can be automated 

We already talked about this when the legitimacy of SEO's was discussed, but it's necessary to go into detail. Such a misconception can cause you to hire an SEO service that will almost certainly defraud you One huge reason why SEO's can't be automated is that not all website traffic is the same.

Firms that offer an automated, prepackaged SE service often forget the crucial difference between the experimentation that rookie does and the pretested path that professional traverses. SEO agencies have to keep tweaking their strategies to continuously con link visibility into link hits. Another reason is that without a human element to this optimization, the difference between good' links and bad'links will remain unidentified.

This will lead to the Penguin updates mentioned above simply removing the bad ones which in turn will lead to a falling all relevant traffic-related aspects. The results that this SEO will be temporary, and might have major long-term consequences. Google might even blacklist your website. When the term SEO comes to mind, it is automatically associated with the technology sector better in the hands of a laptop-wielding software developer than in the hands of a content writer. But with changing times, it is essential that your content is treated with as much importance as a design is. In simpler words, it is wiser to first create desirable original content and then use an IT guy to make sure it scores well on a technical scale as well.

5) Google doesn't value SEO 

After reading all of the above, you have to realize how blatantly untrue this With a careful combination of all the good practices mentioned above, your website's Google search ranking will shoot up. Google uses an algorithm unknown to the public to determine where each website should rank in their search results. It reportedly uses over 200 variables to ascertain this ranking.

What you SHOULDN'T do while using SEO

Google has a dedicated Webmaster Guidelines support page, the ways an SEO can illicitly increase page rank. Here are most some of the common don'ts. The punishments for these are harsh, and its best avoided.

1) Keyword Stuffing 

Ever encountered a link that said something like "The best books by best bookstore cheap home delivery dictionary"? If you see a link like this on your browser, would you ever consider clicking it? No. Even the most basic link analyzing algorithms will detect this as spam, and might easily blacklist it. Instead, it is far more valuable to earn a single good link from a source that doesn't consider you a spammer.

2) Don't over-link 

Over-linking is possibly the most popular way to spam and is a tempting way to manipulate links so that it can (try to) fool the search engine's use of link popularity to determine to rank. There are many ways of doing this, including reciprocating links where sites create links that lead to one another in order to increase each other's popularity Link farming is another way doing this.

This is where scores of low-value websites are made so that increases the link's ranking. Spam is constantly evolving and software engineers continue to battle it, updating algorithms to include a stricter and stricter norm, which means that if you are caught using such 'black hat' practices to improve the visibility of your website, chances are that it will eventually be taken down.

3) Don't buy links to promote your website 

This practice stems from the previous one, as it involves contacting websites that are willing to place your link in exchange for money. These are usually part of bigger networks of link buying and selling, similar to a link farm. Google, in particular, has taken very harsh action against such practices. Take, for example, the time when Google banned Google Japan for ELEVEN MONTH's because it was found that they were buying links. JC Penny was banned for 3 months. Bing doesn't have any penalty against buying link but they frown upon it

4) Don't hide Text 

Text can be hidden in several ways on your webpage. Some of the easier s to change the color of the text to the color of the background,
decrease font size so it is practically invisible. For someone with a working knowledge of HTML. a common way is to enclose everything within <div>, and then select Dev style to "display: none". All this and more can either be accidentally or purposely done to improve your search ranking. However, this can very easily be found out.

5) Cloaking 

This is a much more sophisticated way to "hide your website. It is also against the Webmaster Guidelines because it shows different content to the search engine and the user. For example, to the search engine, it could show that it is a text rich website, while to the user it shows a flash rich website.

A suitable tale of caution is that Google banned its own Google AdWords back in 2010 once it found that AdWords was cloaking. Apart from these common don'ts, there are others that the Google Web Manual warns us about. Practices such as sneakily redirecting a webpage, adding keywords that are irrelevant, sending automated queries to Google, phishing, installing malicious software like Trojans

Even having an excessive number of ads all sites that host screenshots will get you in trouble. All in all, there are numerous white hat practices that can be used efficiently to speedily improve your search ranking and you should stick don't want to get into trouble.