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Computer Help
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Let's assume you make a change to your website content.
Maybe after a few days you notice that your Google ranking for a certain keyword
has altered. Now, it would be natural for you to assume that your content change
had led to change in ranking. However, it may not be true. Your ranking could
have changed due to several reasons, and may have absolutely nothing to do with
the changes made to the content.
Organic SEO Myth 1: You must submit your website URL to search engines.
Once upon a time, this could have been the "in" thing. But since the past 5-6
years it has become unnecessary.
Organic SEO Myth 2: In order to get better ranking, you absolutely need a
Google Sitemap. It's partially correct. However, if you have built your site
properly (ensured its crawler-friendly) you don't require a Google Sitemap. That
being said, having one won't hurt you and you can even use other Webmaster
Central tools offered by Google, but this doesn't guarantee higher ranking.
Organic SEO Myth 3: For higher rankings, update your website regularly.
Regular updating of your content pages may certainly increase the crawl rate for
search engines, but not your website rankings. Only update your website content
if it is necessary and not because search engines will like it any better. As a
matter of fact, the highest ranked websites on Google are those that haven't
been updated in years!
Organic SEO Myth 4: PPC (pay per click) ads can help or hurt rankings.
What amuses me most is that many people believe that participating in Google
AdWords campaigns will hurt their organic SEO ranking, while many others believe
that PPC will spike the traffic and up the ranking. All I can say is that
neither of this is true!
Organic SEO Myth 5: Not following guidelines on Google will ban your website.
Google's guidelines are common sense but not mandatory. It's advisable to read
them, however just don't do anything purely for search engines and you'll be
fine.
Organic SEO Myth 6: Buying links can lead to banning of your website. It is
partially true again. Google doesn't like to count paid links as votes for a
website page. Mostly Google is unable to find out if the links are paid for, but
even if it does, it won't count the links. Google won't ban your website in any
case. A quick update - Google has made it easier to report paid links in sites
that are unrelated to your site. Though the reasoning is yet unclear and best
practice should tell you don't buy links in unrelated sites to your theme.
Organic SEO Myth 7: Header tags or H1 should be used to ensure high
ranking. There is no evidence to prove this. However, this is one of the most
common myths. You can reach top Google positioning without H1 but they certainly
don't hurt so use H tags correctly.
Organic SEO Myth 8: Meta keywords tag need to be used on your page. The
fact is that a Meta keyword tag was introduced to use keywords that are NOT on
the site page already! However, this tag is ignored by Google in any case.
Organic SEO Myth 9: The SEO copy should be 250 words in length. 250 words
is not really an optimal number nor is it specific for SEO rankings. Easily, 250
words allows one to write good marketing copy and can be optimized for 3-5 main
key phrases. However, shorter SEO copy works just as well.
Organic SEO Myth 10: Your pages should be optimized for the long tail
keywords. This is not true. Nowadays, long-tail keyword phrases are no longer
effective as not many pages use them and not many people search using long
tails. You can include these keywords in blogs or even an article, but that is
not really optimization.
Remember don't go spreading any SEO myths that you believe may be true. Test it
yourself several times on different websites before reaching any conclusion as
there are other factors involved as well.
Within the past months, rankings within Google have become more dynamic,
more fluid. They can change from day to day, what some people are calling Google
Everflux. This is very similar to the old Google Dance we used to have a few
years ago...when Google would update or refresh its index about once a month.
Now Google is stepping out on that dance floor every day.
Over time old links you had are being dropped, as Google re-ranks their
links and index. The whole fall-out from Google's paid link crackdown is still
being played out as webmasters scramble to devise new ways to juice-up their
links. Google is firing back with new ways to keep its index supposedly honest,
an ongoing, turbulent battle that will probably get more turbulent. As new sites
and links become important there will be a constant change in the rankings
within Google.
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Computer Help
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