Understanding Top Myths about Search Engine Optimization -SEO

If you ask someone how to go about getting your site optimized and listed in major search engines, you are likely to hear many misconceptions about search engine submission. You may even be taken for a ride and end up needlessly parting with some hard earned cash. So, before you start throwing away your time and money on website optimization, read these myths and tips on Search Engine Optimization –SEO.

• Submitting website to Search Engines is Very Important
  

It would indeed seem that you submitting your site to the search engines is of utmost importance. After all, if your site is not in the search engines then how will anybody find you?
It is important that your site have to be included in the search engines, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have to actively “submit” your site. Reason is search engines use their “spiders”, or robotic search programs to scour the Internet looking for new pages. Search Engine robots will regularly visit your site and will follow the link of your site to gather your information.

• So many search engines that you should be listed in
  

Have you seen advertisement saying “Guaranteed listing in more than 200,000 search engines”. If you look at the traffic details of most websites you will see that most of traffic comes from a handful of search locations, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask. There just aren’t thousands of search sites on the Internet. So, don’t pay money to be listed on these sites. Oftentimes, the sites referred to in these advertisements are seldom-visited free-for-all links pages. If you get listed on such a page you will not get much traffic, but you will get a lot of spam. Concentrate on the major search engines and avoid such advertisement

• Must do monthly submission to search engines
  

In the early days of the Internet, the companies that handled search engine submission warned the public that sites can be easily lost from search engine indexes and that to prevent this from happening it is important to resubmit your site every months. They also said that this was a good way to let search engines know about new additions to your pages. It is not very likely that your site will disappear from a search engine for no reason at all. If your site is “down” for a considerable amount of time then it might be possible for your site to be dropped from the listings, but otherwise this rarely happens.
You can create a “robots” Meta tag and give instructions such as “revisit every 7 days” (or 15 or 1 month) and this will accomplish the job better than a resubmission.

• Website optimization is too difficult to understand for regular people
  

Not so. The basics of a good website optimization strategy will equip you with what you need to make your site succeed in the search listings. Once you have the basics under your belt, you’ll be well prepared to optimize your site.

• I can never catch up as there is too much for me to learn about optimizing my site

Again, not so. Website optimization is just like any other subject. Just learn the basics and move on from there. You’ll be surprised at how much more comfortable you feel once you’ve learned the core concepts. Read about Understanding Search engine optimization-SEO basics

• Only I must submit my Web site to search engines, and I am done
  

Not quite. In fact, submitting your site to search directories or search engines does not guarantee instant success. The act of submitting your site does not guarantee that you will now receive more hits. Site submission just tells the world that you are out there and ready to be visited. It's just part of the website optimization process.

• Website optimization is very long process
  

Not really. Again, the core of good website optimization is very basic. It just means you need to have a different point of view when writing your content, creating your source code, and designing your site’s look. You’re already spending time doing all these things, so if you optimize your site for your visitors and the search engines, you’re really only helping yourself in the end.

• My site has many WebPages and I can never make it on Top
  

The best strategy is to take one page at a time. Each page is a possible doorway into your site: that means that every single page can be your calling card to a possible customer or user. Focus on your most popular pages first to see what they need, and then keep the website optimization core concepts in mind as you create new pages.

• Meta tags are the most important part of website optimization
  

Meta tags, such as keyword, title, and description tags, are informational HTML tags in the head section of website pages that search engine spiders use as part of their indexing strategy. Meta tags are by NO means the most important part of optimizing your site, but they are a part of a successful website optimization strategy.

• Use of doorway pages, keyword stuffing, and more tricky stuff will help to get high rankings
  

Doorways, cloaked pages, keyword stuffing - these are all part of what is known as "black hat SEO" and definitely should NOT be part of a good website optimization strategy. Read White Hat VS Black Hat Techniques

• Top ten ranking in a very short period of time is my target
  

Getting your site to the "Top Ten" of any search engine should not be the end goal; while obtaining that high ranking is a nice side benefit, your true target is providing a service to your visitors with your Web site. Web pages that give searchers what they are looking for, more traffic naturally will follow.