Search Engine Ranking Myths

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a complex and diverse topic that's both never constant and constantly changing. There are hundreds of myths about SEO, some were once true but no longer apply (outdated information), while others were simply never true to begin with (disinformation).

Everyone wants to increase their rankings with the search engines and because of this there is a ton of information available on how to go about it. Unfortunately, while some of this information is real, there is just as much or more information that is outdated, wrong, and a complete waste of time, money and energy on your part.

One of the myths is to use meta tags to boost your research results. This is proven to be useless because while keywords are still essential, meta keyword tags are ignored by search engines since a long time ago. Another myth is that pay per click advertising methods has some sort of impact on the search rankings of certain search engines.

Google Page Rank is way over-valued by many webmasters. It is not unusual for a website with a PageRank of 2 to outrank a website with a PageRank of 5. The reason is that PageRank is only an indicator of one of many factors, and PageRank is not even a reliable indicator, at that.

There are numerous SEO companies that promise to get you ranked high with Google and other major search engines. They may make good on their promise and get you ranked in the top ten. But then what? Don't forget that every other web site owner is going to be trying the same strategy and the competition does not stop once you've positioned yourself on the first page.

A Google sitemap may help you to achieve a higher ranking as it helps to make a website crawler friendly. But it's also true that it doesn't guarantee for better ranking.

Reciprocal linking is quite helpful in better ranking

Outbound links to related and unrelated sites are factored into page rank. One way links count higher than reciprocated links. The more quality inbound links to your site, the higher the PR, but nobody knows exactly how Google factors their PR and their algorithm is constantly adjusted.

This is really a myth. Although a domain name with keyword do in fact play some important role when calculation search engine relevancy, however, my little experiment showed me Google did and could separate a non hyphenated domain with keywords and a hyphenated domain with keywords.

A general myth is that you get bad links, and your site is doomed! If so, everyone would leave their own ranking and start concentrating on how to link each and every rotten link to their competitors' site. Links to unnecessary sites may irritate the visitors, but certainly not the search engines.

Links are important to increasing traffic, Keyword Rich Anchor links are an important factor in the Search Engine Results, but generic links that create Page Rank, not a major be all end all Issue. So if you are buying links or selling links for Links Sake, you are being taken advantage of, and are selling and buying into miss-information.

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