100% Organic – Search Engine Optimization Tips Top Ten Organic SEO Myths

admin    Google Optimization     $100, Engine, Myths, Optimization, Organic, Search, Tips

100% Organic – Search Engine Optimization Tips Top Ten Organic SEO Myths

SEO myths get crazier every year. Some are based partially in reality, and others have spread because it’s often difficult to prove what particular SEO action caused a resulting search engine reaction.

For example, you might make a change to something on a page of your site, and a few days later notice that your ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase has changed. You might naturally assume that your page change is what caused the ranking change. But that’s not necessarily so. There are numerous reasons why your ranking may have changed, and in many cases they actually have nothing to do with anything that you did.

Mixing up cause and effect is one of the most common things new SEOs do. If it were affecting only their own work, it wouldn’t be so bad, but unfortunately, the clueless often spread their misinformation to other unsuspecting newbies on forums and blogs, which in turn creates new myths. It’s always interesting to see how people are so willing to believe anything they have read or heard without ever checking it out for themselves.

Here are 10 of the most common organic-SEO myths:

Myth 1: You should submit your URLs to search engines. This may have helped once upon a time, but it’s been at least 5 or 6 years since that’s been necessary.

Myth 2: You need a Google Sitemap. If your site was built correctly, i.e., it’s crawler-friendly, you certainly don’t need a Google Sitemap. It won’t hurt you to have one, and you may be interested in Google’s other Webmaster Central Tools, but having a Google Sitemap isn’t going to get you ranked better.

Myth 3: You need to update your site frequently. Frequent updates to your pages may increase the search engine crawl rate, but it won’t increase your rankings. If your site doesn’t need to change, don’t change it just because you think the search engines will like it better. They won’t. In fact, some of the highest ranking sites in Google haven’t been touched in years.

Myth 4: PPC ads will help/hurt rankings. This one is funny to me because about half the people who think that running Google AdWords will affect their organic rankings believe that they will bring them down; the other half believe they will bring them up. That alone should tell you that neither is true!

Myth 5: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s guidelines. There’s nothing in Google’s webmaster guidelines that isn’t common sense. You can read them if you’d like, but it’s not mandatory in order to be an SEO. Just don’t do anything strictly for search engines that you wouldn’t do anyway, and you’ll be fine. That said, the Google guidelines are much better than they used to be, and may even provide you with a few good tidbits of advice.

Myth 6: Your site will be banned if you buy links. This one does have some roots in reality, as Google (specifically Matt Cutts) likes to scare people about this. They rightly don’t want to count paid links as votes for a page if they can figure out that they are paid, but they often can’t. Even if they do figure it out, they simply won’t count them. It would be foolish of them to ban entire sites because they buy advertising on other sites.

Myth 7: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings. There’s very little (if any) evidence to suggest that keywords in H tags actually affect rankings, yet this myth continues to proliferate. My own tests don’t seem to show them making a difference, although it’s difficult to know for sure. Use H tags if it works with your design or content management system, and don’t if it doesn’t. It’s doubtful you’ll find it makes a difference one way or the other.

Myth 8: Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page. I used to spread this silly myth myself many years ago. The truth is that the Meta keyword tag was actually designed to be used for keywords that were NOT already on the page, not the opposite! Since this tag is ignored by Google and used only for uncommon words in Yahoo, it makes little difference at this point anyway.

Myth 9: SEO copy must be 250 words in length. This one is interesting to me because I am actually the one who made up the 250 number back in the late ’90s. However, I never said that 250 was the exact number of words you should use, nor did I say it was an optimal number. It’s simply a good amount to be able to write a nice page of marketing copy that can be optimized for 3-5 keyword phrases. Shorter copy ranks just as well, as does longer copy. Use as many or as few words as you need to use to say what you need to say.

Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail. No, you don’t. By their very nature, long-tail keyword phrases are uncompetitive; meaning that not many pages are using those words, and not that many people are searching for them in the engines. Because of this, ranking for long-tail keywords is easy…simply include them somewhere in a blog post or an article, and you’ll rank for them. But that’s not optimization.

Before you go spreading these myths or any other SEO info that you believe is true, test it many times on many sites. Even if it appears to work, keep in mind that it may not always work, or that there could be other factors involved.

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing And Top Google Position Holygr Myths

admin    Google Optimization     Engine, Google, Holygr, Marketing, Myths, Position, Search

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing And Top Google Position Holygr Myths

You are about to discover the top ten search engine marketing (optimization) myths. Prepare yourself, as a lot of misconceptions around search engine optimization will be cleared.

1- Building a website means that people will find it.

Search engines are just like phone book directories (but with a twist). For a mere 0 anyone can get a telephone biz listing in their area, but if you want to have a stand out high visibility ad such as “Marbury & Madison: Justice For All”, you need to put extra work on your site. Unlike phone directories where you simply buy your way in, with search engines you need to spend some time and effort to correctly optimize your website. Search engine optimization does NOT include the simple editing of meta tags. That technique worked back at the time Bill Clinton was a president. Today, other techniques are involved.

2- All search engines are equal.

There are only three top search engines: Google, Google, and… Google. This is either through their website or affiliated websites (Yahoo! and AOL). Over 80% of ALL search engine results are served by Google. Sites like: Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Netscape and the rest are just portals, and not database companies that provide search engine results. Nearly all of these portals share search engine results provided through third parties, that own the database and search engine technologies, such as: Google, Overture, Open Directory, Inktomi, Teoma and FAST. All of the secondary search engines, total for the other 20% of search engine results.

3- Submitting my website to search engines should be enough.

Huh.. It ISN’T. Maybe your webdesigner submitted your site to Yahoo, Google or/and MSN, but where is it ranked? Are you in the critical top ten results page, or are you no. 195 for “Newyork Attorney”? Infact, having a website a year or several months old, will make search engines automatically include it, but we are talking about search engine optimization. Searc engine marketing or optimization (SEO) will help you rank high for the keyword/s you are targeting for your site, instead of remaining buried under the pile of higher ranked sites on top of you, and not being noticed.

4- You can optimize your site for all search engines.

Nope. There is no holy grail. However, there is “Google”. Given that it serves over 80% of the results, optimizing your site for it, will be essentially optimizing for nearly all of the results. The techniques that work well for google, will work well with other search engines too.

5- Practices like cloaking, jump pages or hiding content will increase my ranking.

Search engines view and treat such unethical tactics, like weapons of mass destruction. Search engines have their own teams of inspectors that regularly ban the websites that use these spam strategies and techniques. Use these techniques at your own risk. They might help you in the short run, but eventually you’ll get your website into trouble and possibly a bann.

6- I don’t need a SEO specialist.

If you act alone, you can probably achieve decent search engine results for a few keyword phrases. However, you have to keep in mind that your competitors are trying the same. A SEO specialist already knows the little quirks and tricks that make a big diff. and give you the edge. If you pay them a one-time fee of say: 00 to 00 to correctly optimize your website pages, and that optimization leads to a new client each month, is that not worth it?

7- Software can automatically optimize my website

You need to work and hand code each page of your website, to achieve the optimal and desired results. If your Honda Accord’s cruise control can drive you to Atlanta, then a software would do the work, but I don’t think it can. Do you? You will have to edit the title meta tag, description meta tag, keyword meta tag, and include the same keyword phrases several times in your context body (text body of that webpage)

8- A Good SEO Specialist will guarantee me top 3 results.

No company or firm can do this. If a search engine firm guarantees top listing, then what they are doing is actually selling you advertising. SEO is the work of optimizing your site to rank high, without the need of advertisment.

9- Link popularity is the key at all costs.

I personally encourage reciprocal links with related sites. I don’t recommend creating spam links to artificially boost your website’s rating. You should also never link your site to spam sites, or sites that have thousand of websites in their database.

10- I should submit my site to 1000+ search engines.

Maybe you’ve come across one of these emails, claiming to submit your site to all search engines. These companies simply register your website using automated software. This doesn’t achieve desired results and can actually hurt your ranking as the search engine may reject your listing viewing it as spam. Furthermore, there really is no need to submit your website to 1,000 plus search engines as almost all web-traffic comes from only a handful of search engines (80% from Google).

Related Google Optimization Articles

Twitter: Followers, Niches, and Myths

admin    Twitter     Followers, Myths, Niches, Twitter

Twitter: Followers, Niches, and Myths

Twitter has certainly emerged as one of the most popular social networking/blogging platforms of the past few years. There are various reasons why Twitter has become so wildly popular. It is a simple concept where brief messages can be sent to loyal followers. This is why Twitter is so helpful to small businesses. It can aid in promoting a business in the most cost effective manner. Really, this is one of the very best systems for promoting updates, info, and deals to the followers of the Twitter account. The one problem here is that most entrepreneurs look towards quantity as opposed to quality in their followers. This can prove to be a huge mistake since you never want to sacrifice quality when looking to amass Twitter followers.

How do people make such a mistake? Well, they look at volume as being the secret to their success. The problem here is that the process is not going to be a very successful one. Rather, it will prove to be disastrous more than anything else because your business would end up promoting itself to those that are really not interested in the products or services you are offering. Yes, some people will sign on to be followers of your Twitter account with no real interest in being customers. That is why you need to develop a strong niche following as opposed to a large following.

The bottom line here is you do NOT want a large list of followers. You want an EFFECTIVE list of followers.

Some may consider this notion to go against the grain in which a Twitter account should be approached. After all, Twitter is wildly popular so why not follow the trends? The average Twitter account has changed dramatically since July. The number of followers the average account maintains has jumped from 70 to 300. This has led many accounts to increase their number of postings. In July, the number was in the range of 119. Today, it has jumped significantly to 420. But, is there a great deal of benefit from such increases? In all honesty, if the followers are not going to purchase, the numbers do not really mean much. That means all those increases in updates have less value as well. Again, you want your efforts to be effective. Promoting volume in your approach is not the way to achieve any true level of success.

One problem with a large number of followers is that your tweets need to be adjusted to handle larger volumes. That means your tweets need to be clearly understood by all. As such, the tweets much promote a generalized approach to the tweets. This is not always the best method because you are not providing detailed and specific information in the tweets. This means those that are serious potential customers may lose interest in the tweets or cease taking them seriously. This is not a good thing if you are seriously trying to sell a product or service.

It becomes a full time job to sort and respond to the real people who are interested in you. Twittering without engagement of your audience defeats the entire process of marketing. I believe many people are using twitter as “lets throw it out there and see what sticks” I can tell you from testing that this approach does not work. No wonder people are leaving twitter in droves.

This leads to a more potentially serious side effect. If more members of Twitter venture towards promoting generic, uninteresting, and uninspiring tweets so as to boost the volume of people reading, the health of the social network site will not stay strong for long. Basically, why would anyone would want to follow Twitter when the tweets decline in value? This would certainly not be a positive in terms of the ability for a small business to procure new customers that are vital to the health of the business. Again, exploring options for expanding a business’ success should center on niche marketing. This approach needs to be taken with Twitter or else the value of Twitter will decline. Based on what we are seeing, the decline will be difficult to avoid in the future based on current actions.

Does this mean that Twitter is decidedly lacking in value for those seeking to utilize what it has to offer? No, no one is making such a statement as it would be a decidedly inaccurate one. Twitter, in fact, has taken steps to promote niche marketing. This is evident in the ability to devise “Twitter lists.” Twitter lists allow you to take certain member of your massive group of followers and put them in a particular category. You can then promote your tweets to individual members of these various lists. So, you can present wide, generic tweets as well as individualized tweets to those that may be considered more serious potential customers. For example, you can create a group of people that have already made purchases in the past. Then, you would be free to issue tweets directly to such individuals as you wish. This would be an effective form of niche marketing that would be far more beneficial that putting forth perpetually generalized tweets. One of the other problems with having 1,000’s of non niched followers is seeing through the noise of twitter.

As such, it is best to look towards expanding these individual lists in order to expand the potential to niche market. Yet, many will seek to put forth the exact opposite goal. They will look towards greatly expanding their number of followers into the thousands while never stopping to examine whether or not such a massive list truly boosts their success potential. Such a strategy is a flawed one that will not lead to the empirical success that is sought. And if you are not looking to succeed with your business, then why even bother being in business? Twitter has tremendous value and it delivers great benefit to those looking to expand their small business’ promotional strategies in a cost effective manner.

In conclusion, be sure not to become hung up on the notion of greatly expanding your follower’s list and, instead, seek to promote effective niche marketing strategies instead.

Search Engine Ranking Myths

admin    Google     Engine, Myths, Ranking, Search

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complex and diverse topic that’s both never constant and constantly changing. There are hundreds of myths about SEO, some were once true but no longer apply (outdated information), while others were simply never true to begin with (disinformation).

Everyone wants to increase their rankings with the search engines and because of this there is a ton of information available on how to go about it. Unfortunately, while some of this information is real, there is just as much or more information that is outdated, wrong, and a complete waste of time, money and energy on your part.

One of the myths is to use meta tags to boost your research results. This is proven to be useless because while keywords are still essential, meta keyword tags are ignored by search engines since a long time ago. Another myth is that pay per click advertising methods has some sort of impact on the search rankings of certain search engines.

Google Page Rank is way over-valued by many webmasters. It is not unusual for a website with a PageRank of 2 to outrank a website with a PageRank of 5. The reason is that PageRank is only an indicator of one of many factors, and PageRank is not even a reliable indicator, at that.

There are numerous SEO companies that promise to get you ranked high with Google and other major search engines. They may make good on their promise and get you ranked in the top ten. But then what? Don’t forget that every other web site owner is going to be trying the same strategy and the competition does not stop once you’ve positioned yourself on the first page.

A Google sitemap may help you to achieve a higher ranking as it helps to make a website crawler friendly. But it’s also true that it doesn’t guarantee for better ranking.

Reciprocal linking is quite helpful in better ranking

Outbound links to related and unrelated sites are factored into page rank. One way links count higher than reciprocated links. The more quality inbound links to your site, the higher the PR, but nobody knows exactly how Google factors their PR and their algorithm is constantly adjusted.

This is really a myth. Although a domain name with keyword do in fact play some important role when calculation search engine relevancy, however, my little experiment showed me Google did and could separate a non hyphenated domain with keywords and a hyphenated domain with keywords.

A general myth is that you get bad links, and your site is doomed! If so, everyone would leave their own ranking and start concentrating on how to link each and every rotten link to their competitors’ site. Links to unnecessary sites may irritate the visitors, but certainly not the search engines.

Links are important to increasing traffic, Keyword Rich Anchor links are an important factor in the Search Engine Results, but generic links that create Page Rank, not a major be all end all Issue.  So if you are buying links or selling links for Links Sake, you are being taken advantage of, and are selling and buying into miss-information.

SEO Myths- Value of Page Rank

admin    Google     Myths, Page, Rank, Value

Much ado about nothing! Google’s Page Rank is probably the most hyped non issue that has taken the webmaster down the slippery slope of misinformation I have seen in a long time.

The Google Page Rank is a value that is seen in Google’s toolbar that evaluates a website based upon the amount of incoming links.

The actual formula is a little bit more intensive and capitalizes on each pages value based upon inbound versus outbound links via a standard deviation and algorithmic equation.

Much has been assumed that the higher the Page Rank, the better the Search Engine Results ( SERPS) and related traffic benefits. This is absolutely wrong.

Page Rank has the smallest if any value toward the Google algorithm calculations for SERPs.

Check the page ranks of any top ten search results, I am sure you will see several sites that have lower page rank but Higher SERP ( closer to #1).

Links are important to increasing traffic, Keyword Rich Anchor links are an important factor in the Search Engine Results, but generic links that create Page Rank, not a major be all end all Issue.

So if you are buying links or selling links for Links Sake, you are being taken advantage of, and are selling and buying into miss-information.

Do the tests yourself. “Allinanchor” or “inanchor” meaning Keyword related links are important. Straight Links for Page Rank Values and the ranking of a site. Not a Major issue.

Save your money going for Page Rank. Concentrate on fresh content, and improving the site, as well as linking with keyword anchor links.

Look for more information about SEO and Linking in the next article.

SEO Myths and Facts

admin    SEO     Facts, Myths

In the decade or so since the search engine was first invented, the field of Search Engine Optimization has evolved. Some obsolete information and old wives’ tales still persist, and these can damage your standings.

The myths and obsolete techniques fall into a few broad categories:

- Keyword density: There are many number of magic formulas touted on the internet, claiming that if you reach the perfect number of keyword instances per page, your rankings will go up. While you do need to have the keyword somewhere in your text in order to have your stated keywords considered relevant, artificially inflating the number of instances is a bad plan. First, it simply decreases the quality of your content. Second, the search engines may begin classifying your site as too spammy, and actually downgrade your rating.

- Tags and META: Loading keywords into your page headers and the meta data of your site is also an old trick that’s now likely to get you classified as spammy. Only keywords that are relevant to your content and specific to what your users are searching for should be included.

- Links: Some fraudulent SEO services, and some outdated pieces of advice, will associate your website with link exchange systems and link farms. Since the search engines keep track of these farms and exchanges, and using them is considered trickery, being part of them can actually significantly downgrade your rating.

- Submission to search engines: Once upon a time, submitting your site to search engines was a long and arduous process, which was nonetheless necessary to get a good place in the rankings. These days, search engine submission is generally not needed at all, since the engines automatically search for new sites. If they don’t find yours quickly, manual submission is quite easy and there are a few top search engines that have most of the market share.

Conversely, there are a few relevant and current strategies for climbing the ranks of search results. (It should come as no surprise that these are broader and more difficult or time-consuming to implement than the myths would suggest.)

- Unique content: Consistently offering high quality content that is valuable to your users, unique on the web, and from original sources is by far the best way to attract users – and search engines – to your site. If your site consists of copy, providing a unique value in information filtering, commentary and analysis, or other user-friendly services.

- Voice of authority: Along with unique content, offering an authoritative voice is a good way to increase your links and therefore your page ranking. Either become an authority yourself or offer interviews, quotes, or guest content by noted authorities in your field. If well-respected people and organizations recommend or reference your site, your popularity will rise.

- Professional networking for link sharing: As a web master, blogger, marketer, or business owner, professional contacts matter for a wide range of activities. Additionally, you may ask these people to link their sites with yours, or to provide expert and authoritative content for your site.

- Crawler files: Having a robots.txt file that is updated, accurate, and properly configured can make your site easier to catalogue correctly. Building the site’s architecture in a crawler-friendly manner can give your site a slight edge that may be worth pursuing. Do remember that search engine developers are concerned with their users and serving them appropriate content. They’re smart enough to outwit most technical tricks.

5 Myspace Marketing Myths Busted

admin    mySpace     Busted, Marketing, mySpace, Myths

If you are familiar with the Internet then you have heard about Myspace, the most popular social network out there.

If you have thought about the potential marketing power of Myspace but you didn’t take full advantage of it due to certain rumors that are common today, this guide may help you.

Here are five of the most known lies about Myspace marketing.

Myth #1 – Profiles with cute girl’s photos do better than others.

False!

Although this was true on the beginnings of Myspace, the exponential growth of this network has made Myspace users smarter and smarter everyday. They just don’t fall for this anymore. If you intend to do some Myspace marketing then you should make your profile noticed, and the best way to achieve this is using animated images.

Animations doesn’t just look cooler, they also will make your profile more noticeable and believable.

Myth #2 – Myspace sues Myspace marketers.

False!

Myspace has become a large corporation, to the point that they just don’t lose time taking legal actions against regular users. While they might very well sue giants like space station or space promoters, suing small users (those who make less than ten thousand dollars) simply represents too much waste of both time and money. Think about it: attorneys cost money, and taking legal actions against small Myspace marketers like you and me just isn’t worthy.

Myth #3 – You can easily bypass captcha verifications.

Absolutely false!

Some time ago there were some programs that could “guess” what was written in a captcha image. Recently, Myspace has invested some money and effort in improving the captcha image generation and verification process. For this reason, there is no program that can break this protection, and there is a good chance that it will never be.

Even the best available software designed for this task, Friend Blaster Pro, has officially and publicly announced that they will not be able to bypass or break captcha verifications at all.

Myth #4 – Myspace is just for kids.

False, false, false.

Nowadays, the average age of Myspace users is 32. This means not only that a very big part of the millions of Myspace registered members (about half male and half female), are not just kids, but it also means that they are potential consumers.

The truth is that if you are not marketing on Myspace then you are missing a big number of great buyers, and therefore your profit is not as big as it can be.

Myth #5 – Myspace marketing is in fact spamming.

Absolutely false.

There are some people who create lots of different profiles and I must say that this may work for them. But the truth is that if you really want to build credibility, the best way is to keep away from spamming practices.

Think about Tila Tequila, a girl who started a real Myspace music promotion revolution and got millions of fans who knew about her and her music in Myspace.

I must say that I have helped many clients to build their credibility on Myspace myself, always using legitimate means, and with astonishing results. They got an average of 200%-300% increase in their sales, and Myspace had no problem at all with that.

I hope this quick guide helps you. See you later!