More and more people are calling themselves search engine optimization (SEO) experts and most of these so-called SEO experts know nothing about SEO than just spamming (See this or this). Such SEO Experts have nothing more than a 5 page website dedicated to SEO Services and start spamming. As an SEO forum admin I see people create accounts to get link in the signature and don't add much value to the forum. I personally delete all such posts and accounts but I do visit those SEO related links in signature and try to interact with them. At times I see some funny myths among the so call SEO experts and so let me share those myths here. 1. Higher PageRank means better Google Rankings Yes, you will be shocked to see so many SEO Experts in 2011 still run after Google toolbar PR and think that Toolbar PageRank is one of the factors to Google rankings. 2. SEO is one-time task SEO experts quotes me some large chunk of amount for getting my site in the first 3 spots in Google and suggests that it is one time fee that I pay and I can rip the benefits of my investment for the rest of my life. 3. Directory and Search engine submission When I want to know the type of tasks they will do for my site and one of them is omnipresent - We will submit your site to search engines and directories. I am sure this used to work a decade ago but is not SEO anymore in 2011. You can always submit you site to top search engines like Google and Bing but even that can be avoided if your site can be found through a link from some other page or site which is indexed frequently by those search engines. 4. Meta tags One of the most commonly used term by SEO experts is - On Page SEO factors like Meta tags especially Meta keywords and description to rank well in Google. I even don't remember when Meta tags were out of the SEO equation. Probably was a thing of late 90s if I am not wrong. 5. More links means better rankings SEO experts tell that your XYZ competitor has so many links but you have only so few. They don't tend to analyze the quality of those links but mainly run after number of links pointing to your site, not the quality of links. Relevant and high quality links always help more and contribute more to the ranking potential of a website than large numbers of low-quality links. 6. Any Content is Good content Some SEO experts suggest me to have more content on my sites. As I ask them details about the type of content they write, I almost get shocked. Understand that any content is not good content and it should be content which you yourself would like to read. As an example if I am doing a Wordpress Setup for my clients I always refer my Wordpress SEO posts to see that I don't miss anything for my clients. Remember I am not hired for SEO but for Wordpress setup still I prefer doing basic SEO for my clients as well because I think if I am doing a setup it should be the way I would for my own blog / site. Note: Go4Expert is hiring writers and if you are sending me a sample of your articles make sure it is one of those articles which you are ready to read yourself again and again. 7. XML Sitemap boosts ranking I am yet to see an SEO expert who can answer why I need an XML Sitemap for my site. I still don't have an XML sitemap for Go4Expert. XML sitemap is a great addition to your site if you have areas of your site which is not very well linked from the home page of your site or you have pages which update very frequently and Google is not visiting those pages too often to update its index. XML sitemap is not something you need for your 5 page website where you hardly have any update done for ages. 8. Keyword density is formula for success For those who are not sure what keyword density is - It is the percentage of time a word or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. Some SEO experts will suggest adding few more times the same keyword within your content to rank higher in search engines where as others experts will suggest numbers like have X percentage of keyword density to rank well in search engines. No one for sure knows what percentage of keyword density is good but if it is something you are adding for your users that is best keyword density you can have according to me. 9. Guarantee Google Position SEO experts guarantee you a position in Google. If you see such guarantee you can be rest assured, it is one of those SEO experts who know nothing about SEO. He or she is guaranteeing you something that is not under his or her control. 10. SEO is some secret formula Many SEO experts can rank you well in Google because they have a secret tie up with Google to get your site ranked on top though they cannot get that done for their own SEO services site. Have you come across such SEO Experts? Share your experiences in comments below.
Ohh C'mon Shabir ! I appreciate your hard for putting so many points at one place regarding "SEO Myths of SEO Experts" from your frame of reference but i wish to differ that all these points are too well known. Please don't mind but even a beginner in SEO knows all theses facts. By the way nice sharing. And please do not delete my account in retaliation.heheeee...
It shows your expertise with SEO but try to interact with some SEO services site and you will see how much people know about SEO. See the link I have in my blog which will say what kind of SEO experts exists.
Sure. I would love to read the referred blog. If next time any so called "SEO Expert" guarantees #1 ranking on Google , then do not forget to ask them whether they hold a majority stake in Google Inc or Are Larry Page and Bin Sergey their brother-in-laws???.:nopity:
Thanks for mentioning all the myths shared by seo experts. In my opinion the best one is the last one its like without knowing the final outcome they are committing for that thing which is not sure by anyone.
You nail the topic but i only want to say SEO is not really that simple, but bottom line is, that if website is well optimize both for on page and off page SEO, you generally get higher search engine rankings, which Leeds to traffic for you. And you explain these onpage and offpage things very well.... cheers..
Well Shabbir i may not agree you Meta Description Tag Myth, i am sorry for that but just to share with you my best onsite seo tool/tactic is Title Meta & Description Meta tag. Yes the other points you have mentioned are pretty true including keyword Meta tag myth. I hope my post here will help us to understand SEO better, do share with me your thoughts on it
Well not out rank my competition but yes to rank the website up. In short it helps to raise the ranks & Meta tags are not that useless
I don't agree because what you are doing is not backed by any data. You may certainly see ranking well because of meta tags for very low competition keywords but then you would anyway rank well without the meta tags as well. See this post by Matt Cutt in 2009 where Google officially announced that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in web ranking.