Exposing SEO Myths and Misconceptions
by David Smith
Search Engine Optimization is not a black art or a mysterious science as many supposed SEO specialist
companies would have you believe. There are no shortcuts or tricks to achieving a high page ranking
in the major search engines such as Google or Yahoo. While there are many websites that have used
questionable methods in the past to attain a high visibility in the search engines, the use of those
methods today will likely result in your site being cast into the darkest depths of search engine
placement. Internet publishers, merchants, and marketers should steer clear of companies offering
them instantaneous traffic or high search engine ranking overnight for a fee. If you read the small
print, the majority of these comapnies do not guarantee their claims, and more than likely are only
concerned with making a profit off unsuspecting and confused website owners who are desperately
trying to increase their business.
Keywords Do's and Dont's
Optimizing your website with proper, well thought out keywords in both your Meta Tags and content is
not a guarantee of high search engine placement, but it won't hurt your chances. "Keyword Spamming"
is just plain ignorant, and while using unrelated keywords in hopes of driving extra traffic to your
website may result in a few extra hits, it will never help your site grow and maintain visitors. In
fact, you may turn off potential customers or visitors when they realize they have been duped into
visiting a site that has nothing to do with what they were searching for.
As a rule of thumb, the two
most important elements of a webpage when it comes to utilizing keywords are the page title, and the
actual url of the webpage. For example, if you have a website named "www.mytoysite.com" that
specializes in collectible toys, and a page on your site is devoted to "Star Wars Figures", you
definitely would want to use the keywords "Star Wars Figures" in the <title></title> tags as follows:
<title>Star Wars Figures at www.toysite.com</title>. You would also want to name the page something
like this "Star_Wars_Figures.html". The use of underscores where white spaces would normally be in
file naming is far better than "StarWarsFigures.html" or naming the page "page10.html". Stay away
from non-descript page naming and titling conventions, also stay away from titles such as "The
Biggest Selection of Star Wars Figures on The Planet", as it is unlikely somebody would search for
the terms "Biggest Selection". Keep your keywords minimal and targeted. Additionally, your domain
name plays a part in indexing, and having the words "collectible" or "toys" in your domain name only
enhances your visibility.
Another often overlooked area to place well thought out keywords is in the ALT attribute for images
and the TITLE attribute for hyperlinks. While it is common for most webmasters to overlook utilizing
these seemingly unnecessary tag attributes, they are very important, and all of the major search
engine's spiders utilize them in ranking a webpage. Again, be warned not to use overloaded or
unrelated keywords.
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