3 SEO Myths

3 SEO Myths

Author: Jerret Turner

Given the importance of search engines in driving quality traffic to your site, it´s no wonder that Search Engine Optimization or SEO is such a vital element to the success of any web site.

While there´s loads of good SEO advice available for your use, there´s plenty of bad advice too, which can actually do more harm than good.

The following are three SEO myths.

1) Just get links

The old mantra "The more links the better" doesn´t hold as much water as it used to. It may have worked earlier, when the Internet was more manageable. In keeping with an ever growing Internet and increasing misuse of link exchanges, search engines have now adopted different, varying criteria for ranking web sites.

Today, an over abundance of links from irrelevant, low-ranking sites and link farms could actually cause you more harm than good - getting your site penalized. While links continue to be vital to the success of your website, what is important for SEO purposes is that you use a wide variety of anchor text and seek out one way links only with sites that are relevant to yours.

2) Outsource and then "autopilot" your SEO tasks

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.

In order to stay at the top, you will need to keep your web site continuously updated, employ innovative new methods to keep attracting visitors to your site, and try to keep getting a steady flow of one way links.

There are several ways to do this:

• Personalize your website with latest updates on lifestyle, technology or finance.
• Write articles and submit them to article directories.
• Join a blog that´s relevant to your business and post valuable comments; don´t forget to include a link with your signature.
• Write testimonials for other web sites in exchange for a one way link to your site.

3) Optimizing for every possible search engine

We´ve all seen the Ask commercials demonstrating how much more user friendly their search is. But, a commercial is one thing and reality is another.

It´s really a matter of optimizing for the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) and letting everything else fall where it may.

If you have a website that is well designed and content rich, it is sure to please almost all major search engines. What´s more, you are likely to build a significant portfolio of search terms where different terms attract traffic from different search engines.

But, spending your time trying to please every search engine is an exercise in futility. You´re better off spending your time optimizing elsewhere.