1) Myth: Websites can be optimized while they are being built.
Fact: Only a small percentage of designers and developers actually optimize pages for the search engines while they are building. The majority search engine optimization (SEO) is executed after the website launches. Over 50% or more of all websites are improperly coded to rank high in any given search engine.
2) Myth: Placing keywords in the keyword meta tags will get the page listed under that keyword.
Fact: Google for one, and other major search engines do not even utilize the keyword meta tag. If an engine does utilize meeta tags if the keyword adn keyword phrases are not in the content of the page, it may be considered as SPAM which will lower your rankings.
3) Myth: Automated queries to a search engine will get your site penalized or banned.
Fact: Search engines cannot distinquish a program generated query from a manual query.
4) Myth: The more times you repeat the keyword in the page, the higher it will rank (known as keyword density).
Fact: A keyword density of approximately 5% or slightly more is used as a guideline. Proper keyword density will get listed higher. A keyword density that is too high will get penalized by engines.
5) Myth: Hidden links or text in a page can get your page ranked higher.
Fact: Keyword stuffing and hidden links in the page will get your site penalized or banned if detected. This is considered a SPAMming technique.
6) Myth: The more reciprocal links to other sites you have, the higher your Google page rank goes.
Fact: Outbound links to related and unrelated sites are factored into page rank. Reciprocated links count higher than unreciprocated links. The more relevant quality inbound links to your site, the higher the page rank.
7) Myth: You don’t need to update your site to keep your rankings.
Fact: Performiong routine maintenance and editing content and updating your pages regularly, you are signaling the bots and crawlers to come back and re-crawl your site for changes to their listings. See the next Myth to reinforce routines and scheduled changes.
8) Myth: You don’t need a robots.txt file and sitemap for your site.
Fact: The first item of code sypder bots look for is the robots.txt file. This file, if properly coded, tells sypders if they are allowed to index the domain, what directories and paths to follow and which are excluded from crawling. If a sitemap is provided, they will follow every link on it–otherwise parts of your site or pages may not be completely indexed. Put them in the root directory of your domain and link to the sitemap from your main page.An XML sitemap can be implemented to explicitly tell a spyder how often a page is updated i.e. daily, weekly, or monthly.
9) Myth: Search engines cannot index pages with Flash and using Flash in your page will lower it’s ranking.
Fact: Search engines cannot index a Flash movie itself, but, if you specify Flash text (in the HTML) used in the movie, the text in the movie along with the rest of the page HTML will be indexed. Flash does nothing to keep the page from being properly indexed, nor does it keep your page from being crawled.
10) Myth: You can get higher rankings on any keyword without changing the code or content of the pages in your site.
Fact: Totally untrue.
Contact Boca Raton Web Services today at 561-213-7191 0r 561-213-7192.
