Common SEO Myths

Considering Search Engine Optimization help? The most important thing to keep in mind is that the process of SEO is constantly changing. You may have thought that some of the following factors would always lead to getting your site a top page ranking. This may no longer be true. Taking a look at some of the following points may help you save valuable time and resources.

Keyword Meta Tags
We’ve all stressed about defining the right meta tag keywords. Despite what you may think, Google does not use this data to determine your search position. It is still important that your site has keywords in the title, meta descriptions, heading and content, but don’t rely on them to capture first place rankings. Use them as a guide to keep track of the terms you are optimizing individual pages for and as insurance just in case some engines other than Google factor the tag info into their algorithms.

Meta Descriptions
There was a time when every SEO recommendation talked about the proper length of the meta description. It used to be the few lines of text specified by the site owner. Not any more. Google’s algorithm now picks up matching lines/phrases in the page content related to the search query and displays selected parts of the content on the SERPs (Search Engine Page Results) snippets. So be sure to do your keyword research when preparing content.

Keyword Density
While there was probably truth to this idea at one time (because search engine spiders can detect patterns), it holds little merit today. Ensuring that the content page is being optimized to include keywords is important, but the actual percentage that these words are used (keyword density) is not.

Dynamic URLs
The big three search engines have made major strides in how they manage dynamic URLs. The result is that duplicate content is much less of a concern today. The most commonly used and avoidable parameters (e.g. session IDs, product attributes) are “known” by search engines, so no extra effort is required to convert them to an SEO friendly format.

Flash
While search engines (Google in particular) are getting better at indexing Flash, there’s still a long way to go. It used to be that having an all Flash web site would result in a poor SERPs performance, but the reality was and is that using Flash gives you fewer options for SEO compared to a content rich page. But that doesn’t mean it is “bad” SEO. You can focus on other SEO factors, such as building high quality links, and get equally good results.

SEO is always changing. Knowing what is true and is not will help your prospects find your site. Don’t write to please the search engines. Making your content, links, and your social media efforts as relevant to your market as possible is the best plan for increasing SEO.

Reference:
Peter Pretipino
Website Magazine