SEO My THBUSTING.

INTRODUCTION

The face of SEO has definitely changed over the last few years. At one time it was enough to sprinkle a few keywords throughout your content and then find your website on the first page of Google.

Today it is much harder, you have to first compete with the thousands of other marketers looking to get that top spot in Google or Bing and then you need to maintain that position.

Then add in the fact that Google is constantly changing its own algorithms so it can be difficult enough to just stay up to date on all of these changes.

Don’t forget that some sites are so huge that they act like a search engine themselves. These sites include ones like YouTube and Amazon and can be utilized to help you to drive visitors to your site and make more money.

There are a number of myths prevalent in online marketing and again these can be confusing and sometimes downright frightening to some people. This short report will focus on explaining these myths and relieving your fears. We have included some tips on what SEO activities you should be doing and how these can help your site become more visible in the search engines.

Hopefully you should feel more confident on how to perform SEO on your sites by the time you have finished reading this report.

Just always keep in mind that providing quality content which is informative, useful and easy for your visitor to find should always be your top priority.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

SEO MYTHS

The following myths are the most common ones that we tend to come across on a regular basis. We have attempted to explain the myth in more detail and provide you with additional information as available. As with anything on the web more myths about SEO will appear over time. The best thing for you to do when this happens is to do your due diligence by researching the myth before changing your SEO practices.

So let’s get started with our SEO myths!

Duplicate Content

Is it as bad as people claim? There seems to be a ton of confusion over duplicate content. What you want to avoid is having duplicate content within your site. For example don’t have the same post about dog breeds on more than one page of your site otherwise it will be considered duplicate content. Posting the same article on a different site is fine and you will not get penalized for it.

If you are concerned about this in anyway change up the content that you are planning on posting, say to an article directory or document sharing site. Make the article you share more general and have it point back to the more in depth post on your website.

You don’t want to put up two sites with the exact same content as this will get you into trouble with Google. If you have two similar sites take the time to make the content different. One idea would be having one site as your main authoritive site, while the other site has more detailed information on one specific aspect. This way both sites will complement each other.

You can read what Google says about duplicate content at the following link:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate- content-penalty.html

Keyword META TAG will help

Meta tags are no longer indexed by Google and other search engines. It is important to remember that your Meta tags still show up in the display area of your search engine results. It is worth the time and effort to create a compelling Meta tag text that will entice readers to click through to your website.

This first sentence should be about 150 characters long and should entice your reader to want to find out more. Take some time to craft a good sentence and don’t forget you can change it at any time. Once you have tested a few descriptions find the one that brings you the most traffic and stick with it.

This first sentence is often referred to as your Meta tag description and can be an extremely effective tool in helping drive visitors to your site. As well use the Mega Title tag field to include your main keywords that you are trying to rank for.

Header Tag size does matter in SEO

It is true that using the H1 and H2 tags do help your site. What is a myth is the style and size of the headings you use for each of these. It doesn’t seem to matter to the search engines what type of font size or style you use. It is important to ensure that the headings are easy to read.

You have to submit your site to search engines

No they will find you providing that you are linking to relevant content or to another site. The search engine spiders will crawl your site and index you.

Some people still like to submit their links to the main search engines but it is not really necessary. But at the same time it can’t really hurt either. If you have the time and want to go this route then it is up to you.

You don’t want to confuse this with submitting your sites to directories as this is something different. Being listed in a directory can help people find your site. There are plenty of free directory sites that you can use. Look for those that pertain to your business and aim to be included in them. Professional directories are also another option.

The search engine bots can’t crawl images

True the search engine bots and spiders can’t crawl any type of image or video. What they can do however is to read the alt tags and file names. A good SEO tip is to always fill in these fields when adding images to your site. Use relevant keywords and your images will appear on many image sharing sites.

Content isn't Really important

Yes, it is still important and here is why. The search engines monitor how much time a visitor stays on your website. They will measure how long it takes for a user to click on the result of their search and how much time elapses before they hit the back button on their browser and look for another result. This shows the search engines that the user did not find the content they were looking for.

The quality of your content does matter. At one time articles and blog posts were always written with as many keywords jammed into them as possible. This was known as keyword stuffing and when it was overdone resulted in some horrendous articles that were difficult to read let alone understand.

Today it is important to provide advice and helpful information to your readers. Worthy content will be rewarded with a high search placement within the search engines. Google will reward you if you consistently provide this type of quality content.

If you have a hard time finding content you can use a method called content curation. This is basically when you take a popular topic and discuss the post or article on your website. So all you are doing is adding your point of view to the article. You are providing fresh content on a popular topic which will add value to your site.

Subscribing to blogs within your niche is a great way of finding content and this can be achieved by using Google Alerts and making use of your Google Reader.

You want to remember too that content can be in various forms and this includes content such as video, news, maps, images along with shopping information and recommendations. Providing more than one form of content of your site today is considered to be a good SEO practice.

Updating your site with fresh content is important and should be done on a regular basis. Remember adding content can be as simple as making a few changes or adding a few new images, a video or a quick blog post. We would suggest making any new post a minimum of 250 words.

Get as many backlinks as you can!

The Panda update actually penalizes sites with spammy unnatural links. It is far more important to have quality links over any quantity of incoming links to your site.

Your focus today should be on getting links that add value to your site. This includes links to blogs that offer additional information in regards to your content. Your goal is to have relevant information whether you are promoting products or are offering services.

So before you add links to your site be certain that the site contains useful and helpful information that will benefit your reader. The more value you offer your visitors the better.

When adding or creating links one of the worst things you can do is go out and build 100 new links in one or two days and then never create any new links again. This looks forced and unnatural to Google and will only serve to send up a red flag. Instead concentrate on creating a handful of new links every few days or once a week. Keep to a schedule which is manageable for you.

One of the best ways for you to create links back to your site is to start leaving blog comments on related blogs. Leave comments that provide helpful and insightful information in the thread. In addition to creating a backlink you will be inviting more visitors to continue reading over on your own blog. It is helpful to leave a link where the visitor will be directed to more information on the same topic on your blog. This is a much better move than just linking back to your home page.

Having More than 100 links on your site can lower your SEO ranking This is one myth that has several people concerned.

Just take a look at some of the top rankings for different sites and check to see how many links they have. Many will have way more than 100! If you are using extremely competitive keywords you may want to keep this number in mind and not go over it. Instead you would want to look for keywords that are less competitive and start building links for those. This SEO practice would definitely help you increase your search engine rankings.

The search engines may in fact not search past 100 links but it seems that having more links does benefit your rankings. Just remember to create links that compliment your site and offer additional information and/or resources for your visitors.

Social Media and SEO are separate

Actually now they are more intertwined than ever before. It is important as a website owner to interact with social sites. Think of the social aspect as a way to brand yourself and/or your products and services. Incorporate Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + and Pinterest into your marketing as ways to get known online and to market with like minded business owners.

In Facebook it is a good idea to create a Fan Page for your business this way you can keep your personal and business lives separate. People love Facebook so be sure to keep your page

updated with snippets from your blog and record your daily or weekly business activities.

If you send out emails many auto-responder providers now allow you to broadcast your messages via Facebook and Twitter. Take advantage of all these venues to help get the word out about your business to everyone.

If your business makes use of images and graphics be sure to open a Pinterest account and begin sharing your photos and designs on that site. Pinterest is a high traffic site that is gaining in popularity, don’t overlook this. Create a new account and then start pinning images. One word of caution here is that you don’t want to self promote too much. Your first step should be to pin and share other images that you enjoy, just make sure they are related to your business in some way. Then occasionally add in an image directly related to your business. This could be in the form of promoting a special deal that you have going on.

If you are creative in any way then Pinterest could really help you take your business to new heights.

Some SEO is Good A LOT must be better!

Actually you can over optimize and end up hurting your website. The best example of this as we mentioned before is stuffing your site with keywords that are out of context. Keyword stuffing is a sure-fire way of getting your site de-indexed.

Plus think about it, if your readers can’t understand what you are trying to say, will they come back to visit? Of course not! Remember visitors to your site are looking for information to solve a problem or they are ready to buy a product. Provide them with what they are looking for and don’t overstuff your site with keywords.

The same goes for linking, too many links too quickly is a huge no-no in the world of SEO. Take things at a steady and consistent pace if you want to win this SEO game.

The following video has a great explanation on what overstuffing your site using SEO practices.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-onsite-over-optimization

I can worry about SEO any time

You should consider SEO as part of the website creation process. SEO really does start from the minute you install your wordpress or html site.

Add suitable category headings that make it super easy for your visitors to find what they are looking for. Navigation around your site is important and something to keep in mind when building your new site.

If you begin your search engine optimization practices from the very beginning you will be making it easy for the search engines to find you. Plus adding content or new pages every couple of

days will keep the spiders and bots returning to crawl your site regularly, which is another good thing.

Vary your content as well and this includes adding images and videos. Don’t forget to link your images with keyword related names. This way they are more likely to show up on image related websites. Again this will help you increase the traffic you see coming to your site.

SEO Is Dead...

Not yet!

It is still important to perform SEO on your site. One way to do this is to target various keywords as this will help you attract more attention and visitors. At one time webmasters concentrated on targeting only a handful of keywords which will vary depending upon the size of your site.

If you have a huge site with tons of content then visitors will be using a wide selection of keywords and search phrases to find you. Your goal should be to attract a high number of visitors by using a larger number of keywords. This is considered better SEO practice than aim to bring in fewer visitors with a handful of search phrases.

There are so many ways a visitor can find your site that you really can’t pinpoint it exactly. The best way to attract as many new visitors as possible is to have a good variety of quality posts

and articles on your site. When checking your stats you will probably find yourself ranking for combinations of keywords that you would have never imagined.

Tip: You can use your Awstats inside your Cpanel or Google Analytics to see which keywords are being used to send traffic to your site.

Guaranteed Rankings

No one can really guarantee you a first spot in Google anymore. Page rankings still hold some weight but not as much as in previous years. If your page rank is high you will still rank highly but having relevant information that is deemed helpful by Google is absolutely necessary.

Honestly, what is the point of ranking high with certain keywords that are not relevant to your site? Yes you will see lots of traffic but they will not stay on your site as you are not offering the solutions or information that they are looking for.

There is no such thing as a quick solution to get guaranteed rankings. It really would be a waste of your money to pay a company who promises you that elusive number one spot on Google. Yes, they may get you there but you have to keep your site in that position. This is when good SEO practices will really come into play.

Companies "Endorsed by Google"

Google doesn't endorse any SEO company, they offer Analytics and Ad Words certification but that’s not same thing. So again we strongly advise you against using any type of company that says they are endorsed by Google. Instead research and understand what you can do each day to improve your site and to increase your own rankings within the search engines naturally.

SEO is one time activity

No it’s an ongoing process that should be put into practice on a regular basis. It absolutely begins when you create your site but should continue once you have begun to add content to your pages.

Make time on a regular basis for the following SEO activities:

• Leaving helpful blog comments

• Add new content to your site

• Add tags and links to your images

• Adding videos

• Writing guest posts for other blogs

• Looking at your Google Analytics and taking this information and using it

SEO is full of trickery

Many marketers may have used tricks at one time or other but today the simple answer is No, SEO is not full of trickery and if you do try and trick the search engines you will only come off

worse in the end. You will wake up one morning to find your site gone – is this what you really want?

SEO trickery is often referred to as Black hat and while some of these methods have worked extremely well in the past they are not worth the risk. Are you prepared to stake your business and livelihood on some backhanded tactics that will eventually catch up to you?

While you can say that SEO is full of trickery there are no tricks that will help you maintain good SEO practices. The best trick, if you like, is to learn proper SEO and apply it on a consistent basis to your sites.

Spending Money On Google Adwords Boosts Your SEO rankings

Numerous people have thought that if they run an Adwords campaign they will improve their image with Google.

If you use both paid and free traffic sources there is no doubt that if your campaign is targeted you will see a growth in traffic. Your click through rates and your visibility will increase.

So yes spending money on Adwords can be a good thing. But don’t spend the money if you just want to get on the good side of Google, you won’t! If you choose the wrong words to target you are basically sending money down the drain.

Keyword Rich Domain Names are a must

This may have helped a site at one time but with the latest Google updates many keyword rich domain name sites suffered penalties. If your site is regarded as an authority site in your niche it will be given a higher ranking by Google regardless of how many keywords are or are not in your actual domain name.

With the last Google update many sites that had product names in them found that they had dropped off the radar. Instead of using a specific brand or product name it may be a better practice to use a general term, such as sewing machines, in your domain name, and then have a specific page dedicated to a brand name or individual product.

If you have any type of review site you may have been hurt by the latest update. It may help to take any smaller sites that have been de-ranked and build them into an authority review type of site.

No-follow links are useless

The no-follow link was first introduced as a way to link to something without passing any value onto that particular site. This would mean that any type of spam links that may end up in your comments page would not actually be associated with your website. The no-follow link was used by sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter.

In the traditional sense this was thought to mean that the search engine spiders didn’t actually follow the link, instead they would simply ignore it and move on. But in reality this is not what actually happened.

The search engine spiders or bot would follow the no-follow links and crawl through all the content, but they did not pass on the value and associate it with the site. So there was still some value in these no-follow links as they would help to increase the crawl rate of your sites and help them get indexed.

As with any type of link building, general practices advise you to have a good variety of links coming into and going out of your sites.

Don't link to other sites

This myth was and still is worrisome to many big business owners. They often wonder if linking to other sites is good business practice or not.

Not linking to sites looks just as unnatural as linking to thousands of sites. Both will kick up warning signs with the search engines. So you want to make a point of linking to sites that offer great value and good content to your visitors. Business owners should not be concerned about passing off customers to other websites or losing business. Your readers will be glad that you led them to further information and will return to your site more often.

By linking to other sites you could be creating more traffic back to your site. Provided that you have good solid content or sought after products for sale.

Flash is bad for SEO

Many sites are built using Flash entirely or have incorporated Flash in some way. Numerous people were concerned about the use of Flash wondering if it would hurt their search engine optimization practices.

It is an acceptable practice to use Flash to build animations or for small sections of your website. But it is advisable not to use Flash for important or key content.

Bear in mind that thousands of people are now using their smartphones to access the internet and currently smartphones do not support Flash. So this could be a big concern for you and is something that you should be aware of.

SEO TIPS

Below you will find some SEO tips that can help you improve your website’s ranking.

Since April 2010 Google takes into account the load time for your pages. The faster your pages load the better. Ideally your page should be displayed in less than one second.

Using an XML Sitemap helps the search engine spiders navigate your site and find all of your content. There are many wordpress plugins that you can use to automatically create a sitemap for you.

When uploading images to your site you should take a minute to label the image. Instead of uploading a dog image and labeling it image009.jpg instead use words that describe the picture such as blacklab.jpg. This way your images will turn up on image sites and this can be a helpful way to get more traffic to your site. It really only does take a minute to name your images, plus when you need to find one again you can without searching through pages of image files.

Link to pages on your own website for example have links from your home page to another page with related content. This practice is often referred to as deep linking.

When linking to related sites it is best to link from a page of content as opposed to setting up a link directory page and linking

in that way. Linking from content makes your links look more natural and allows your readers to follow the link and continue reading further, related information.

Don’t worry if your site ranking fluctuates in Google this is perfectly normal and you will see that you move back up again. If you site suddenly disappears then you may have been penalized for some action. Check the Google webmaster tools to try and see what has happened.

Today with the explosion of mobile devices onto the market it is worth the time to make your site mobile friendly. This is in terms of size and load time. By having a responsive wordpress theme that loads onto the various devices you will attract more visitors.

When it comes to landing pages view all of your sites pages as potential landing pages. Many people tend to assume everyone arrives only on their home page and so sets it up accordingly. By viewing all your pages as potential landing pages and optimizing them as so you will find more visitors staying on your site for longer time periods.

Aiming for the number one position on Google or any search engine is great. If you find yourself in the top ten and are seeing lots of clicks then you should be happy in this position too. There is no point in adding cheap content just to rise to the number one spot. Instead concentrate on delivering quality information to your customers along with a good experience on your site. This

includes your visitors navigating your site quickly and easily, finding the information that they are looking for.

SEO works for free but it is not free. You still need to hire someone to help you with this job or learn how to perform SEO yourself.

SEO TERMS

We have included a quick explanation of some SEO terms that you are likely to come across.

• Conversion rate – the number of visitors that take the action you desire as opposed to the number of visitors who arrive on your site

• SERPS – search engine results page

• Page Rank – often referred to as PR is the way Google measures the importance of your page

• Crawl Frequency – how often your website is crawled

• Matt Cutts – head of Google’s search quality

• Deep Link – a link that points to an internal page on your site

• De-Listing – be temporarily de listed from a search engine or directory

• External Link – a link which points to another domain

• Google Bot – Google’s search engine spider

• Inbound Link – link pointing to one website from another

SUMMARY

Many experts will try to convince you that Google views SEO practices as spam. In 2011 Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s search quality and team produced a video stating the following:

“SEO is a valid way to help people find what they’re looking for via search engines.” So what this boils down to is that Google does not view SEO techniques as spam.

Your best guide is to concentrate on developing a website that you can be proud of. Your site should have a ton of information on it along with useful resources and links to further information. Don’t try to cheat the system and buy links or traffic that is not targeted to your site. While you may see a slight increase in traffic, you probably won’t see any increase in sales. Plus any push in the search engines is most likely going to be short lived too.

If you concentrate on practicing good SEO you will create an endless stream of traffic which will turn into repeat traffic, and eventually buyers of your products and services.

Don’t worry about using certain tactics to increase your search engine ranking, you will only be disappointed and run the risk of losing your site altogether.

Remember: Relevant and quality content will be among the best SEO practices you can ever perform. A well performing website

will load quickly and be easy to navigate. Using these criteria you will be setting yourself up for success!

We really hope that you have enjoyed reading our report. Please feel free to contact us on our blog if you have any questions at all. Below you will find a short list of useful resources that will help you keep up to date on good SEO practices. While Google is the main search engine don’t forget not to overlook the traffic that Bing could possibly bring you by obtaining a good search engine ranking there.

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