New to SEO? Correct some misconceptions
“Our site gets a ton of traffic! We’re so popular,we’re a shoo-in for top ranks.” Search
engines don’t have insider information about your over all web traffic, so they don’t know exactly how popular your site is. But they can count up how many sites they find that link to your site, and this is one factor in how they judge your site’s popularity.
“We’ve got to get more sites to link to us so that our ranks will improve!” If the only reason you set out to get more links is so that Google will rank you higher, you are missing the big picture.
Inbound links are pathways that allow people to visit your site.They can be excellent, direct sources of targeted traffic!
“Our site is doing great! We ranked #1!” Ranked #1 for what? Starting now, erase
“We ranked #1” from your vocabulary and replace it with “We ranked #1 for the term ______”. Ranks are irrelevant unless they are tied to a meaningful target keyword.
“We’re only going to promote our home page.” SEO is not about your site, it’s about every
page of your site. Every single page in your site stands on its own merits and can sink or swim
based on its unique combination of the factors described in this chapter. If you approach SEO as a
page-by-page endeavor, you will be on a surer path to success.
“We’ve filled in our meta keywords tag…we’re good to go!” The meta keywords tag carries
very little influence with the search engines, and it’s certainly not going to do much for your ranks
if the rest of your site isn’t shipshape. Just like any element of SEO, the keywords tag works best in
the context of a holistic approach.
If you’re brand new to SEO, you may have a couple of incorrect notions in your head. Let’s get rid of those right now - - - - - -
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March 27, 2009 at 1:22 AM
“We’ve got to get more sites to link to us so that our ranks will improve!” If the only reason you set out to get more links is so that Google will rank you higher, you are missing the big picture.
This is very well said. And this is where most of the people really get mistaken with. Don't just try to please the spiders of search engines, try to please the readers too.
By the way. here’s an additional list of SEO misconceptions that might just help us be more educated. And not WASTE our efforts. Link: http://www.squidoo.com/SEOmisconceptions
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