SEO – Myths, Risks and Pitfalls
by: Nicholas C Smith
From my experience, people who try to increase the flow of organic traffic to their websites domain will at some point attempt a whole bunch of
“optimisation techniques” without knowing if any of it really has had, or is having, any effect at all. Some of the SEO techniques I have seen
people attempt are, whilst quite useless, based on a good idea. Other methods continually amaze me. Perhaps people that try such things have
heard spurious rumours of how to get their site into Google’s top ten listings from certain forums. Incidentally they are probably at such a
point of desperation that they are willing to try anything to gain just ten more visits.
I am regularly inundated with the same questions such as: Is it worth submitting my site to 300 search engines? Will I get penalised for cross
linking my sites? Should I pay to have high ranking sites link to mine? And what exactly does Google page rank do, if anything!?
Questions such as these have driven me into despair and consequently writing this article during which i will attempt to explain definitively the
more common SEO myths, risks and pitfalls. In this article we will examine some of the more common beliefs.
Before we get to the list it is worth noting that I have not written it in a particular order and at times I have explained the topic the myth
concerns before answering the question.
Link Building
Q)Will the more links that point to my website increase my sites placement in search engines?
It will help your website as far as the major search engines are concerned. The most popular search engines use the number of links aimed towards
a website as an important factor in determining the sites placement. They look for your link to be coming from sites with; high traffic, quality
content and a high page rank, amongst other things. Do no cross link, do not spam your address in forums and on social networks and do not put it
on irrelevant sites, or even those that seem slightly dodgy. Take your time, aim for directories that are related to your website, aim for
directories with page rank 3+ or aim for blogs or similar sites that are relevant to your content.
Q)Is it worth me buying a place on a high ranking directory?
So the idea with this is that, say, a directory has a Google page rank of 7 and is very popular. Any site on it will be getting a big rub off via
a higher spot on search engine rankings. However the catch is the directory charges £50 a month for your listing. Is it worth it when there are
so many free directories out there?
Personally I think it is worth it, as long as the site holds its high rank and doesn't have thousands of listings competing with yours on it. The
added bonus with pay for listings is that they usually review and include your site very quickly (24hours), which by itself may be worth paying
for. And if you could buy 10 spots on decent directories your site will most likely become highly ranked on search engine results.
There are problems with this though. Firstly, it is said to be against Google’s terms of service – paying to get a higher listing on Google’s
organic results. (Google want their results to show the best and most relevant websites, not those with the most money behind them) They are
however, unlikely to be too bothered even if they do find out.
The next problem is the cost. For a small company or personal website it is too expensive to pay monthly for many directories to list them, and
possibly not worth it. Lastly, it is not guaranteed to help your website. It should, but does not always. I have paid for listings before and
noticed very little difference, whilst other times it has made a huge contribution to my sites ranking. So it may be a risk, but it can pay off
extremely well.
Q)Will submitting a video about my site or product to places such as Youtube be of benefit to me?
A recent link building trend has been to submit a short video describing the webmasters site or the service it provides, to as many video
submission sites as possible. The theory behind this being that search engines give more weight in their results to pages with videos. So if your
site or product has a video on Youtube, when that product is searched for on the web that video will often come up in the top ten results. If
this video has a link to your site in it, under it or as nearby as you can put it, it should be good news for you and your site. People find the
video as it is ranked so highly in the results, watch the video, like what they see and then visit your site to perhaps purchase what they
saw.
Does it work? At the time of writing, yes it does and it is probably worth doing. Make a video, even if it is just text, sound or a power point
presentation, and then submit it to as many video and social networking sites as possible. People will find it and it will hopefully persuade
them to visit your site. The only real problem with this being that the search engines will not like all of the “video spam” now being posted on
the internet and are likely to change (lower) the priority of videos in their results.
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