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SEO Myths Rumours Exposed!

From Leading Australian Professional - Anthony Parsons and CEO McAnerin Networks Inc - Ian McAnerin
SEO myths and rumours exposed is not a top 5 - top 10 list or the like, simply an attempt at a comprehensive list of rumours about search engine optimization, marketing, pay per click, advertisement, page design techniques and so forth. The problem with most things is they start out well and with a focus on quality, and then the brain starts thinking of ways to cheat. In the case of the Internet, people are trying to cheat the search engines more and more often.

The myths are listed with the reality, which is fact, not fiction. If you find companies that advertise any of their services like those discussed, then you should be wary. That is; evaluate what your doing, what you really need and the end result you really want to achieve. I would suggest you pay for quality the first time. Do the job right when it comes to optimization of a website, and don’t be fooled into believing these other theories.

Why am I telling you this and not some Top 10 list or the like? Because there is no Top 10 list! It is either a myth, or not. I am not trying to sell you my services, they sell themselves. What I am trying to achieve with this information is to 1: stop unethical, unprofessional peoples business practices regarding optimization and 2: ensure consumers have the facts in one place to compare with other professional companies. Stop listening to the hard sell, the big guarantee’s with fine print (so fine you can’t read it), and invest your hard earned money right the first time. Find a professional service provider, not an unprofessional one.

Unprofessional people, who scam unsuspecting persons, give the SEO industry a bad name. The SEO industry is booming more and more nowadays because of the fierce competition within the free rankings. So look out, take care and shop smart. Anyone can write knockout referrals and client references. Confirm for yourself, contact clients and question your SEO to exact specifications detailed, including contract or written agreement details. If in doubt, contact that businesses local business licensing authority and make enquiries. That will help fix the problems if the business is conducting illegal practices; if not, no harm is done.

Search Engine Optimization Myth List
Common Myths
Money Back #1 Ranking Guaranteed?
Achieving a #1 position is more good luck than anything else, to a certain degree. SEO’s have a fairly good idea of what needs to be done, more from trial and error, with basic information that search engines themselves release to the public. The reality is, most of these companies that advertise Money Back, #1 Ranking guaranteed actually sell Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisement. The ones that sell this and are not selling PPC, steer clear because youre being scammed. One common way for this to happen is they get you a number one placement for a long string of words that no real searcher would ever actually type in.

Google explains it like this: No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a special relationship with Google, or that claim to have a priority submit to Google.

All my visitors are word of mouth! Why do I need Search Engines?
Let me put it like this, how can you say that you don’t need search engines, when they have a combined total of many millions of searches performed daily across the Internet? Now take out anything from 100 to 10000 relevant visits of those people looking at your website per day. Perhaps that alone will encourage you to rethink your approach. Visual aid is a selling point. A picture paints a thousand words and the Internet offers that valuable marketing resource to your business. Once you are online, a professional SEO then paints those thousand words to the search engines for you. Now that is what you call effective marketing from search engines!

An average of 85% of all searchers arrive at a website from a search engine. Can you afford to lose them?

Create multiple domains to gain more exposure?
This is already a widely abused but failing technique. If as much effort went into building the one quality website instead of 10 or more of lesser quality, the one website would be outranking all of the competition. The more information contained within the one website is tidier, more efficient and cost effective than over several. If you mirror your website information under keyword domains, then youre actually awaiting a penalty or already have one for the websites containing the same information. The mere changing of each sites design is not acceptable, the actual information contained must be unique to avoid penalty. Work on the one website and invest your time and money there. Look at the big players and the successful sites - do they do this? No. Most search engines will show multiple results from the same site now, but they remove duplicate sites.

Doorway - Gateway pages are the logical solution?
A doorway page, is basically any page that is designed around a keyword phrase with little text or information and made specifically for the search engines. These pages are used by unprofessional people, in an attempt to target keyword phrases, because they have no real knowledge of SEO. What they forget to tell you is that these types of pages are unauthorized by the search engines, under most editorial policies and construed as spamming the search engine. This will incur a penalty for those pages and possibly a penalty for your entire website.

The only time a page like this should be used is during a PPC campaign, and then you must exclude the page from being spidered in order to avoid penalties. A professional SEO can guide you in this matter.

Cloaking is the way to #1?
You may or may not have heard of cloaking. Cloaking was originally designed to stop webmasters having their valuable high ranking code stolen by those who could not make it for themselves. Like everything, some people then decided to make pages especially for the search engines by cloaking them, i.e.. Doorway pages cloaked. Cloaking shows a different page to the search engine than what the user sees. A page is written specifically for the search engines and placed within a folder on the server. When a search engine spiders a particular website, the spider is sent to another folder to read a completely different page from what the human eye actually reads. Because of the abuse, search engines simply classed it as spam and penalize for utilizing it if caught. If a webpage isn’t made for people to read then it is spam. Like any technology, there are legitimate uses for cloaking, but tricking search engines into thinking you have content that the users never see is not one of them.

Cloaking is just a way to make a relevant site show up where it should - so no problem, right?
Wrong. Cloaking was never designed to make a website show up where it should. If your page structure and content is not appealing to the consumers and search engines, then your website should not be highly ranked. A highly ranked website should consist of useful information, products or services about the keyword phrase searched. If you don’t meet those standards, then you are spamming or performing unprofessional techniques that will only see you penalized and your website possibly banned from the search engines. A quality website will go much further than other techniques in the long run. Cloaking is hit and miss. Put your time and efforts into creating a better website and it will happen over time, just have patience.

High PageRank equals high rankings?
Google explains it like this: PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyses the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don’t match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for your query.

I achieve #1 ranking when I type my domain or business name. Why would I want SEO?
That’s great! You’re #1 when you type your domain or business name. Not much of a challenge when you are the only one with that domain and business name. What about when you type in your primary focus, such as mobile phones Brisbane or antivirus software for example? The facts are this. The small amounts of people who know your business name are looking directly for you. No problems, but what about the other 99% of people looking for antivirus software? Are they finding you or your competition? You don’t simply have a website, to be found by those who already know about you. You have a website to find ‘new’ prospective business and increase sales. Most of the time, searchers look for what they want, rather than who you are. An SEO will do a custom keyword analysis for your site and provide a list of keywords used by real people looking for what you have to offer - this list is the one you want to be ranking well on.

I can just copy that site above mine and rank the same?
No. First thing, copying a website is in breach of copyright laws and will land you in court without a website and out of pocket. Second thing, what works for one website may not necessarily work for another, irrespective of whether the general information is the same. There are external features that come into play with ranking a website and to mimic both on and off page features is near impossible. Concentrate on making your website better than the competition. Patience and hard work is a virtue, and distinguishes one website from another. Most search engines have duplication filters in effect that look past formatting changes and do a very good job of detecting duplicate content. If they find it, they keep the oldest (original) page and remove the rest.

SEO can be performed in a week?
Sure can. The initial components can be anyway. But in actual fact, it takes a month or more to see the actual results. This is because you need to wait for search engines to update their index with the current information. Then you need to wait for that information to take hold within the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). Once this has occurred, you may then require further tweaking and adjustments which again requires another month or more to see the results. You can pay for inclusion to see your website updated quickly, however; this has no effect on off page techniques such as link popularity. Whichever way you go, you still have to wait for results.

SEO’s know how algorithms work?
Some people may debate this, but NO! The only people who actually know how any search engine algorithm works are the designers. The search engines themselves tell you this information. I believe that even the designers wouldn’t know how to achieve perfect SEO with the amount of sophisticated techniques required. A professional SEO is good at judging what a website, with its own unique features, requires to rank around the Top 10 to 20 mark, but could not guarantee much more than that, i.e.. #1 or Top 5. Steer clear of those who tell you otherwise. Remember also that the algorithm’s change constantly, so even if you get a number one position this week, next week you may not appear at all. this happens frequently with website designers who focus on the trick of the day to get number one. Once that trick stops working, they disappear because the site focused on it. Professional SEO’s use tricks sparingly, if at all, and focus instead on reliable, consistent methods, just like any other professional.

That crappy site above mine is proof that only cheaters win, so I should cheat too?
Are you sure that the site above yours is cheating? Is it possible that the website above yours has more to do with the actual topic than what yours does? Why not perform some basic checks on link popularity, link text, on page and external features to compare against your website before going further. If a website is blatantly spamming a search engine, i.e.. hidden text, cloaking, doorpages, etc, then contact the search engines and make a complaint, otherwise, it is just possible that the website above yours is more relevant. Looks are not everything, content; usability and relevancy is the key to successful rankings. It’s also common for a site to rank well when it is first launched and then plummet later on. If you emulate it, you will follow it down, too.

That crappy site above mine is proof that SEO is a waste of time?
First refer to the above statement. Secondly, is your website listed within the guidelines of the SEO’s terms, i.e.. Top 10 - 15 - 20 etc. If so, then the SEO has done the job to get your website higher than it was and receiving more traffic, converting to sales. And remember that if that site above yours had an SEO and you don’t, you may be seeing exactly why SEO isn’t a waste of time.

Copywriting Myths
Copywriting! Is it all the same?
You couldn’t be further from the truth. Copywriting is a unique skill learnt by those who generally endeavour to refine their personal skills with a degree in English or another native language, literature, etc. These skills are extremely unique in that writing a sentence to convey your thoughts is one thing, conveying those thoughts in an effective manner is another. Copywriting and SEO copywriting differ. SEO copywriting requires the use of specific keyword phrases inserted within certain key areas of a webpage to please the search engines, whilst still meeting general copywriting requirements. Marketing hype is not copywriting. Constructive sentences and grammatical correctness whilst pleasing the reader, is effective copywriting. Choose wisely. A true SEO copywriter is a highly trained specialist.

Copywriting my own ad campaign - I know how to write?
That’s great. If you’re 100% sure that you can write your own campaign then you’re going to save yourself some money. Let me just ask, do you know exactly what keywords are being searched for and are specifically relevant to your site? Do you hold some sort off marketing or literature qualification? If not, employ an SEO copywriter to write your page content. Professional vs.. Unprofessional can be spotted a mile away.

Invisible text - Can’t see it so it must be good?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The search engines not only see it, they penalize your page and possibly entire website for using it. Any text that is the same colour as a background, layered under images or other means, too small to read, or any other efforts you come up with, are strictly against search engines editorial policies. If you do it, don’t complain when page or all of your pages cannot be found when searched.

It doesn’t matter if I write poor descriptions; editors will change it for me?
Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. The general consensus is that if your descriptions are written well and editors don’t have to rewrite your Titles and Descriptions, acceptance comes easier. When you annoy editors of directories, your chances of them simply pressing the delete or rejected button increases dramatically. I do it myself. Poorly written descriptions to directories that I edit are deleted most of the time, unless I personally like the website. Do the job right the first time and your chances are always improved. With Yahoo having a non-refundable cost to fast review your website only, a professional SEO knows what they are doing, so you don’t lose your US$299. Do the job right and your success will be noticed.

SEO copywriting is rubbish?
Search engine optimization, by itself cannot maintain a website ranking and stability, with the current market competition. To this end, effective copywriting incorporated within every page (where you would like traffic delivered to), will most definitely provide stability. The old tactic of utilizing keyword phrases throughout your site is no longer effective and with most search engines is considered spamming. SEO Copywriting is not the same as copywriting a general market advertisement. Essentially, the purpose of SEO copywriting is to provide quality content pages for search engines to read and visitors to be interested in. Dumping a bunch of keywords into marketing hype is not what SEO copywriting is about.

Marketing
Google is the only search engine I need?
Yeah right, and pigs fly. During the end of 2003, beginning 2004, Google decided to conduct some major algorithm changes. Businesses are going broke, closing down, and sacking employees - all because of one search engine. It is not Google’s fault either. It is the fault of those who relied upon one source of online marketing for their business. Putting all your eggs in one basket is not the best of options. You don’t do it with your finances, why would you do it with marketing your business. You want global, across the board marketing for a website, nothing less. Yahoo, which accounts for almost 30% of searches, switched over to Inktomi from Google on Feb 17, 2004, which dropped Google’s market share dramatically. MSN accounts for nearly another 30%.

My link text is being punished by Google?
Rubbish. If it were possible to create a penalty for another site by linking to them with the wrong words, you’d have complete chaos in a very short time. Creating networks of web sites just so that they can link to each other with your keywords might trip a filter, but that’s spamming, and penalties for this are nothing new. The only time your incoming links can hurt you is if you are linking back to the other site in some sort of mass cross linking system. This is very different from normal reciprocal linking and the search engines can usually tell the difference. Read article from Dan Thies >>

My website doesn’t have a chance at high rankings?
Every website has the chance to assume the top positions within the SERP’s, you just have to work harder for some keyword phrases than others. Professional SEO’s can achieve these goals for you. It’s just a matter of how big your budget is, to acquire the top positions for competitive phrases.

Professional SEO’s are too expensive?
What price do you put on your time? SEO is by no means a quick process. It requires time to analyse, structure and coordinate an effective plan, to put your website on the front-page of SERP’s. Many who attempt to do this themselves generally end up hiring an SEO. First you have to try and learn the basics to achieving a high ranking, then work out, that what works for one website may not work for another. Tricky stuff? You get what you pay for. Pay peanuts, get monkeys - it’s that simple.

Search engine traffic is not effective online advertisement?
Well lets look at it like this. Search engines account for nearly 85% of traffic delivered to any website. That’s a fact by International studies. Consider that, and then consider employing an SEO to perform effective optimization of your website. Think about the possibilities now. Traffic is one thing. Targeted traffic, provided by an SEO, to rank within search engines is a completely different story.

All SEO is created equal?
I wish! There are many unprofessional (unethical) SEO’s around. I cannot stress it enough. Do your homework first before employing an SEO. Google themselves give basic information on what you should be looking for. You can find that information at the bottom of this document. Be careful, and don’t be suckered by what you read. Ask questions and ask previous clients. Get guarantees, contracts and assurance.

Search Engine traffic isn’t high quality?
Having your website widget business found for flowers is non-effective traffic. Having your widget business found for red widgets, green widgets and all derivatives of widgets and associated products is targeted traffic. Keyword analysis is the most important part of any SEO campaign. A professional will ensure that anyone looking for your product, within your locality, or globally if required, will find you. You don’t get more high quality than that.

SEO’s have exclusive relationships with the search engines?
Yes & No. Some companies have exclusive rights to provide paid submissions for companies, more along the lines of XML feeds and in Inktomi’s case, paid subscription. SEO’s do not have any exclusive relationship that would allow them to manipulate results as such to improve your rankings. Any SEO that advertises as such should be reported to the appropriate agency. If you feel you were deceived by an SEO in some way, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) handles complaints about deceptive or unfair business practices. To file a complaint:http://www.ftc.gov and click on File a Complaint Online. If your complaint is against a company in another country, file it at
The>http://www.econsumer.gov.

The only time an SEO could claim this legitimately is if they owned and operated a particular directory or search engine, and none of the major name brand search engines offer SEO or are owned by SEO’s.

You can’t predict the Return on Investment (ROI) with SEO?
If this were true, then I, my clients and the most respected Web researchers are all wrong! The ROI for SEO is excellent when compared to banners, direct mail, email marketing and print advertising. Compared with other Web promotion techniques, SEO gets you better conversion rates, lower cost-per-click, and lower acquisition costs. Any professional SEO can accurately predict your ROI.

Optimization
Content Management System (CMS) means you don’t need SEO?
A CMS system will very often require SEO more than static sites, depending of the dynamic nature of the pages. Certain CMS systems use URLs and search engine unfriendly designs such as frames that make it very difficult to get indexed and listed properly. An SEO will be able to help you choose search engine friendly CMS, and can often help you even if you are stuck with a CMS system that is hiding you from the search engines.

Google is punishing optimized pages?
Not only does this not hold up under close scrutiny, it doesn’t make any sense to begin with. Another way to describe an optimized web page would be a well structured page that clearly indicates the relevant topics. Does Google penalize dirty tricks like hidden text, over-stuffing HTML tags, etc.? Of course they do, but that’s not optimizing, folks, that’s spamming. Penalties for spamming are nothing new. Read article from Dan Thies >>

I can buy software to optimize my website and then sit back?
Not likely. Software can do some code work and other basic functions or give advice. Software cannot write great page copy that all the major engines require for relevancy nor can software adjust substantial code modifications, layout, usability and other substantial techniques that an SEO performs. As I say often throughout other myths, what works for one website does not work for another. Each website is unique and must be approached and techniques utilized specifically to suit each individual site, not one fits all. Sorry.

I can rank highly for a one word term or a competitive phrase easily enough?
Good Luck. Competitive search terms are not necessarily those where millions of searches are being returned. They are those that people are fighting hard to win the top positions. 100% dedication required 24/7 to achieve it.

I hired a professional web designer; I don’t require optimization?
Web design and optimization are two completely distinct services. Most web designers are not interested in SEO because that is not their specialty. This applies to an SEO, web design is not their forte. Some large web design companies employ SEO’s to finalize their work for rankings within the search engines, but not many. Ask questions, because neither is related.

I know I only sell mortgages in Wyoming, but I think I should show up #1 for mortgage if the SEO is good at their job?
This is the vague attitude that many have towards what they believe their website should show up highly for. Actual searches through the search engines are not for mortgage and in actual fact are for more specific terms, such as Wyoming Mortgage or the like. To type in mortgage could bring up a website that has no bearing to your current location or country. Searching for non-specific keywords is not targeting traffic. SEO’s optimize to deliver targeted relevant traffic that are going to purchase from you, not browse your website for the fun off it. There is no point having 100 daily visits with one sale per week. SEO’s attempt to deliver better than that, being 10 daily visits with 1 daily sale is much better statistics that the latter. The aim is not traffic, it is relevant traffic. If the SEO is good at their job, they won’t target generic terms other than to capture qualifier phrases based on them.

I only talk about one topic, so my site is more relevant than others?
This type of statement is your opinion, but not necessarily the opinion of the search engines. If your one topic page still doesn’t convince the engines that it is relevant for that topic with both on and off page techniques, then you lose. Relevance, not just topical information! If your page isn’t structured correctly to allow the engines to pick up the topic, the page is useless.

Meta tags are the key to high rankings?
Meta tags are essentially useless within all major engines today. The only tag actually utilized by all engines is the

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