If you have a business or organization that you are trying to promote with the help of a Website, you are probably well aware of the fact that your site needs to be optimized for search engines. In other words, special attention needs to be paid to the content as well as the overall design of the Website in order to increase your search engine ranking so you can draw in more site visitors. Although optimizing your Website is certainly an important component for creating a successful Internet presence, there are several myths and misconception surrounding search engine optimization (SEO) that may actually be causing your site more harm than good. In this five part series, we will explore some of these popular myths and how you can avoid falling prey to them, starting off with those myths that relate to content and meta tags.
Myth #1: Meta Tags are Extremely Important
It is a common misconception that keyword Meta tags are important, but this is far from the truth. In reality, the search engines are more concerned with site content than with keyword Meta tags. In fact, some search engines don’t even follow the keyword tag. While Meta tags were once of high value to search engines, the overuse of tags by spammers has forced the search engine spiders to become more reliant on content than on the tags.
Myth #2: Be Sure Include A Meta Robots Tag That Specifies Index, Follow
Sure, you want the search engine to index and follow the tag, but it is not necessary to specify this action. All search engines automatically assume it is okay to index and follow unless you specifically say not to.
Myth #3: Only the Homepage Needs to be Keyword Optimized
While it is certainly important to optimize the homepage with keywords, you should never think the job is done once this page has been optimized. Rather, every page of the Website should be keyword optimized, though each page should have its own set of targeted keywords.
Myth #4: Great Content is All That is Needed to Optimize a Website
There is no doubt that quality content containing keywords will help your site achieve a better ranking, but content isn’t all that it takes. Rather, a variety of different off site and on site SEO strategies need to be used to improve a Website’s search engine ranking.
Myth #5: Competitive Keywords Should Be Avoided
Some people avoid competitive keywords and phrases because they think it will be too difficult to achieve a high ranking with those words. If the keywords make sense for your Website, you should never avoid them just because they are competitive.
Myth #6: Keyword Densities Should be Monitored Closely
Once upon a time, SEO experts developed keyword density formulas that were supposed to be used to create content with the perfect amount of keywords to achieve high rankings. In truth, monitoring keyword density is just a waste of time. Rather, it is best to simple sprinkle the keywords into the content in a way that makes sense and creates something that is enjoyable to read.
Myth #7: Homepage Content Should Be Updated Regularly
While changing out your homepage content can be a good way to maintain the interest of site visitors, it is not necessary for SEO purposes. Plenty of stale homepages achieve high search engine rankings on a regular basis.
