Search Engine Optimisation Myths
I regularly teach the Online Marketing Web Academy, and one of my favourite sessions is asking the participants "what has somebody told you to do to optimise your site that you suspect is not a good idea."
You'd be amazed at the garbage people are told. Or worse, sold.
And so today I present the first three of my Top 10 Search Engine Optimisation Myths:
1. Meta Tags will improve your search engine rankings
Repeat after me: search engine crawlers ignore the keyword and description meta tags. Why? Because they know you can stuff them full of whatever words you want and the words don't display to your human visitors. You can safely assume that meta tags have little or no influence over your rankings. And search engine specialists have known this fact since the dark days of 2002.
The description meta tags are important because they can control what displays in the Google results page.
Another important meta tag is robots.txt as it can be used primarily to keep search engines spiders out of your website.
And remember: the Title Tag is not a meta tag! Great Title Tags are crucial. If you need help, download my Title Tag factsheet.
2. Hide some text on your pages by putting white text on a white background
This is a trick that worked in 1999, but today only idiots are suggesting you stuff invisible keywords into your websites. The theory is to increase the density of your keyphrase without human visitors seeing it. Bad, bad idea.
Google explicitly advises against hidden text in it's Webmaster Quality Guidelines and in 2005 Google's Jagger update slammed websites using invisible text.
3. A high Google Page Rank Means High Positions in the search results
A high Page Rank score means nothing if the content on your web page doesn't match a searcher's query. Page Rank is just one of many factors considered when Google produces search engine results. And lots of websites with low Page Ranks still get high rankings in those all important results pages.
Don't get me wrong: Page Rank is important. It's the acknowledged cornerstone of Google's web search tools. And it's essential to understand Page Rank reflects the importance of web pages based on the number of inbound links from other, high quality websites.
There's lots of Page Rank Junkies out there, watching your Page Rank every day, worrying about how it might change. Stop wasting your time.
Next week I'll be giving your numbers 4 to 7 of my top Internet Marketing myths.
You'd be amazed at the garbage people are told. Or worse, sold.
And so today I present the first three of my Top 10 Search Engine Optimisation Myths:
1. Meta Tags will improve your search engine rankings
Repeat after me: search engine crawlers ignore the keyword and description meta tags. Why? Because they know you can stuff them full of whatever words you want and the words don't display to your human visitors. You can safely assume that meta tags have little or no influence over your rankings. And search engine specialists have known this fact since the dark days of 2002.
The description meta tags are important because they can control what displays in the Google results page.
Another important meta tag is robots.txt as it can be used primarily to keep search engines spiders out of your website.
And remember: the Title Tag is not a meta tag! Great Title Tags are crucial. If you need help, download my Title Tag factsheet.
2. Hide some text on your pages by putting white text on a white background
This is a trick that worked in 1999, but today only idiots are suggesting you stuff invisible keywords into your websites. The theory is to increase the density of your keyphrase without human visitors seeing it. Bad, bad idea.
Google explicitly advises against hidden text in it's Webmaster Quality Guidelines and in 2005 Google's Jagger update slammed websites using invisible text.
3. A high Google Page Rank Means High Positions in the search results
A high Page Rank score means nothing if the content on your web page doesn't match a searcher's query. Page Rank is just one of many factors considered when Google produces search engine results. And lots of websites with low Page Ranks still get high rankings in those all important results pages.
Don't get me wrong: Page Rank is important. It's the acknowledged cornerstone of Google's web search tools. And it's essential to understand Page Rank reflects the importance of web pages based on the number of inbound links from other, high quality websites.
There's lots of Page Rank Junkies out there, watching your Page Rank every day, worrying about how it might change. Stop wasting your time.
Next week I'll be giving your numbers 4 to 7 of my top Internet Marketing myths.
Labels: SEO
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