There are so many myths about SEO Advice that we hope to elucidate and clarify so called SEO myths below …..

1. SEO is about secret strategies

There is a SEO myth that there are secret strategies and methods employed by SEO experts that result in top SERPs  (search engine result pages). Of course, this is bunkum although there are “consultants” who might like to suggest otherwise. There are rigorous methods and techniques that need to be followed but the information is widely available. “Secrets” tend to be used by “Black Hat” webmasters who by necessity need to maintain a wall of silence!

2. Keyword Density is critical

In the early days of “SEO” there was some truth in a magic keyword density formula. The search engines have evolved and are well aware of pages stuffed with keywords. Although it is essential to add keyword phrases to a page, there is no magic percentage. The page should be natural and be designed for the reader rather than the search engine.

3. Content, Content, Content

Although content is essential for a website, content alone will not achieve high SERPs. There are other factors at work that must be considered. Bear in mind that there are over 100 factors in the Google algorithm (and other search engines will also have equally complex formulae for working out rankings). ONE of the pre-requisites is good unique content – but NOT the ONLY factor.

4. Submitting Sites to Search Engines

This myth is probably a hangover from the past when this technique did have some effect. Do not bother to submit to search engines, instead concentrate on getting a good quality link(s) from a relevant website. This “recommendation” will not only alert the Search engines of the new site but also help in getting higher SERPs.  Top Tip: Do not keep submitting your site to the search engines – this is unnecessary and some “gurus” suggest that you can get penalised.

5. Guaranteed Rankings / SERPs

“We can guarantee you top SERPs” – this is just not true for competitive keyword phrases. Yes, it is possible to suggest you can get top rankings for “large fat blue monkeys are rare” (on an exact match) as there is NO competition. It is important to choose keyword phrases that you want to rank for carefully – for example, will they bring the type of enquiries you want? Are they “info” related enquiries or “buy” enquiries? This is a topic on its own!

Whilst talking about this myth – also bear in mind it is impossible to guarantee that SERPs will remain constant. So a #1 ranking today cannot be guaranteed tomorrow!

6. Links for top SERPs

Links WILL help but it is just ONE of those 100 factors. A link from any site may NOT be a good link. A link from what Google defines as a “bad neighborhood” can adversely affect your site. Google does not clarify a “bad neighborhood” but perhaps they are referring to adult, gambling, racist, etc. sites. Links should be from sites that share your theme; do not accept links from link or resource pages – they have little value especially if the external links on the page are to all different themes. Do you really think Google cannot spot a link or resource page?

Do NOT use services that will provide instant linking to 100s of sites. It will raise a flag with Google.  Your linking strategy should be planned and be naturally progressive. Check all sites carefully before linking to them – remember your link is perceived as a recommendation. If you start recommending bad sites what does that say about YOUR site?

What is Important: Be extremely careful NOT to link from your site to BAD neighborhoods. Google encourages you to link (recommend) to other sites providing the content is relevant.

Concentrate on getting quality links from Authority sites on your theme!

7. WSC Validation required

In an ideal world it would be nice to have every page on your site validated by WSC. However, unless you have a very diligent webmaster it is an impossible task! It is not essential that every page is validated from a SEO perspective. However, what IS important is that the search engine robots can parse your page(s). If they cannot read a page, then the page will not be included in the index – worse still links on that page may not be followed. The Lynx viewer and search engine simulator are useful tools for checking what is seen by the search bots.

8. Search Engines prefer static to dynamic pages

In the bad old days dynamic pages that were accessed with urls such as www.mydomain.com/link.php?action=view&var=new&country=europe were bad news as the search spiders did not know how to follow these links with “?” in them. The result was that dynamic pages were not accessed and indexed. However, those days are gone. Google says “We can crawl dynamic URLs and interpret the different parameters. We might have problems crawling and ranking your dynamic URLs if you try to make your urls look static and in the process hide parameters which offer the Googlebot valuable information. One recommendation is to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static.”

9. Meta Tags are important

Meta tags were used extensively in the past but again search engines have evolved. It is the content and structure of the page that is important for SEO purposes. A common technique was to stuff the “keyword” tag with an endless list of keywords and phrases – do this at your peril! The title is relatively important as Google uses it to display in their SERPs (and the description is often used too). So the “title” and “description” should sell your website. Get the user to click! Google likes your titles and descriptions to be unique. Use your main keywords in <title> and H1.

10.  High Page Rank required for good SERPs

Google publishes a historic version (up to 3 to 4 months old typically) of your page rank for every page on your site. This is NOT necessarily the current page rank of the page – it is re-calculated on a frequent basis (daily?). It is perfectly possible for pages with low page rank to get top SERPs as there are other factors deciding the SERPs.

SEO Engine

Search Engine Optimisation is an art with some science! There are some rules, some interpretation and then some guesswork. The guesswork is the art form – experience tells you what works for some search engines but not for others.

The Science: the rules are strict – obey them or else your site might suffer a google penalty. These penalties can be triggered by the search engine algorithm or by manual intervention by the Search Engine’s engineers.  So where to find the rules? The most important rules are those set out by Google: Webmaster Guidelines. Most of these rules are easy to understand.

However, the main concern, is the interpretation of the science laws laid down by the Google Engineers. Of course, it is impossible for Google to be 100% transparent and open on the Guidelines. Ask question in the Google Webmaster forum and you are unlikely to get a detailed explanation from a Google Engineer – normally they will refer you to the “Guidelines”. Their reticence is to protect rankings from manipulation by “search engine spammers”. Too much clarity would give the spammers too much knowledge and insight on how to achieve high rankings with “dubious” or so called “Black Hat” techniques.

For example “In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links”. How do they define web spammers? How does a webmaster / site owner respond to a link request – how can you identify a web spamming site? What is a the definition of a bad neighborhood? So this is where SEO turns into an “art form”.

Traffic Advice

There are 2 definitive laws of SEO: 1) Content, Content, Content 2) Inbound Links. Great unique content will draw traffic like a magnet. Create content that is constructed using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and Google will be attracted too! There are, of course,  “science” techniques to creating web pages correctly for your content pages. Google readily admits that inbound links (recommendations) from other sites will enhance your search engine rankings so it is critical to attract those links. This is an art form not a science as the laws are not immutable.

Good SEO firms will offer advice that is white hat (above board) and look after your long term interests. It is tempting to take short term shortcuts – but you do this at your peril.

Anybody can get a top search engine ranking today! Yes – “Anybody can get a top search engine ranking” was the statement. A brave statement that needs qualification but the reality is that anyone with a website or squidoo lens/hubpage etc can achieve high rankings. This SEO advice is all about “How to get Top Search Engine Rankings today“.

Of course, the answer lies in the keyword phrase that you are trying to promote! If you are going to expect top rankings for the phrase “real estate” today – then you are being a tad optimisitic. SEO experts and webmasters spend time researching the keywords that they want to promote before creating pages.

Keyword Research

Ideally the SEO experts are looking for phrases that have low competition but a good number of daily searches for the phrases. Once they have found a good phrase, then they will create a webpage “promoting” the chosen phrase.

So, step 1 – how to find a search term with low competition but high traffic! For this example start with a minimum of 3 word keyword phrase.  So imagine we have a website about the niche “bass fishing”. We are looking for phrases connected to bass fishing – so nip over to Google’s external Keyword tools and enter “bass fishing” as the chosen phrase. Sort the results by Average Search volume; you can see the search volumes and an estimate on Google Adwords competition.  Choose a phrase that has 3 or 4 keywords and reasonable traffic – there is some trial error here! In this example, “bass fly fishing” is chosen for a competition check.

Keyword Competition

At Google.com enter the keyword phrase as follows “bass fly fishing” – note the inverted commas. Look for the number of results just below the Search Box – it will be something like: Results 1 – 10 of about 21,900 for “bass fly fishing”. We are looking for results that have less than 30,000 results so we have struck lucky!

Top Tip: WordPress Blogs are excellent for getting search engines to spider and rank pages quickly. The ping mechanism will alert the search engines about your new pages so your page could be in Google in minutes (about 15 minutes in some cases!).

Create Web Page

The next step is to create a page about “Bass Fly Fishing” – make sure the content is unique and informative. Put Bass Fly Fishing in the meta tag title and content – preferably towards the beginning. Have a h1 tag in the body content for Bass Fly Fishing. Mention Bass fly fishing in the first paragraph and use bold around the phrase.  The remainder can mention the phrase again but do not go overboard – concentrate on making the page informative. Publish the page.

If you are using WordPress the “ping” will alert the search engines about your page. If you can link to the page from other sites – for example, use social bookmarks or submit an article about Bass Fly fishing to the article directories (making sure there is a link back from the “Resource Box” to your Bass Fly fishing page).

Check your rankings!

Example
We are going to test the theory with this article and see how long it takes to get a page 1 ranking on Google.com for “How to get Top Search Engine Rankings today”. This has been published at 5:16 GMT on 22nd September.

More:
SEO Optimisation Principles
Real Estate SEO