5 SEO Myths Exposed
Tuesday 9th June 2009 at 12:28 am

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a relatively new breed of online service offering. Businesses have realised the potential market available through Google and other search engines. This has lead to loads of companies offering SEO services, some good, many not so good. In this article I plan to dispel some of the Myths about SEO and help you on the road to more cost effective search optimisation!

Myth: SEO is a ‘black magic’ art that when mastered can fire your website into the stratosphere of search rankings.

Computers are logic machines, they work on algorithms and follow processes based on inputs - if you put the same thing in, you should get the same thing out. This simple definition should itself make it pretty clear that there’s nothing ‘magical’ or ‘artistic’ about SEO. There are of course good methods and guidelines to follow, but armed with this knowledge anybody can achieve improved search rankings.

What works for you depends on what your website is trying to achieve - it is a source of information? A place to buy products online? A community? Considering the big picture is the best way of working on a search strategy. Ask yourself, where are you now? Where do you want to be? What does my website need to offer my visitors in order to get there?

Myth: Internal optimization of my website is a complex task that I need to pay lots of money for.

Internal optimization of your website is the side of SEO that involves modifying and improving the content/markup of your website. There are loads of great techniques for internally optimizing your website, but you don’t have to pay a specialist to get started. Below are some free tips to help you optimise your website today:

  • Rank information on your page using formatting: Use header tags (h1,h2,h3...) in your pages to identify key phrases. You can use bold too to draw attention to certain parts. Search engines take special consideration of these elements.
  • Keyword consistency: For each page of your website, decide a couple of keywords that are most relevant to the content of that page. Then, make sure you include those keywords in the Title tags, header tags, the main body and a bold section on the page.
  • Change content regularly: Search engines like websites that continually offer new and useful information. Keep your content fresh by adding a ‘news’ or ‘events’ section, or maybe a blog.

Myth: I should put as many keywords on my pages as possible so that search engines think it’s relevant to lots of subjects.

This is simply not true. Filling your page with endless words simply ‘dilutes’ the message of the web page. Make sure you keep your keywords in the right places (see the previous myth for more) and you’ll find yourself much better off in no time at all.

Myth: If I throw enough money into pay-per-click advertising, I’ll find myself right up in the search engines, right?

Pay-per-click advertising does not directly benefit your search rankings. By all means, pay-per-click advertising is a great way of generating sales online and boosting traffic, this may in turn lead to reviews and people linking to your website, which are good ways of boosting traffic. But, no matter how much you spend on pay-per-click, it will never have a direct effect on your rankings.

Myth: META tags are useless, I shouldn’t bother with them.

While it’s true that META tags are not as useful as they were 4 or 5 years ago, the ‘description’ tag is sometimes still used by Google and other search engines as a short description for your web page, therefore this should not be overlooked.

Summary

The truth is that nobody really holds the key to search optimisation. Those companies who tell you they know how Google works are, frankly, misleading people. Google is a superb tool because it intelligently ranks pages based on their true value, and nobody really knows how to manipulate it.

That does not go to say that if you are a legitimate website with a legitimate purpose and content or products useful to your target audience, you can’t be successful. By developing a structured strategy and putting in the time required, you can make your website a search engine success.

If you would like some honest help and advice for your SEO project, get in touch with Olio today. We develop strategies based on simple and proven techniques that add value to your website and ultimately boost your search rankings, without it costing you the earth!