Top 10 SEO Myth-Conceptions

Top 10 SEO MYTHS

(What You Need to know Before Your Boss Asks)
A Point It! Brief
Top 10 B2B Search Mistakes
Whether you're an experienced marketing manager, or just starting your career, it's imperative that you know the fundamentals of search engine marketing and optimization. Making the wrong decisions about your web site can cost your company time, money and lost business. If for no other reason, you certainly don't want to let your boss know you're a marketing dinosaur ? Although the rules frequently change, there are myths and half truths that just need to be put to rest forever. I've researched what I believe are ten of the most egregious offenders for your reading pleasure. Let's get started, shall we.
Myth #10: It's important to use keyword rich Meta tags for ranking higher
This myth has been thoroughly trounced by now, but there are still some believers. Search engines no longer give much credibility to Keyword meta tags or "meta keywords" as early search engine marketers frequently stuffed them with irrelevant keywords; which the engines eventually recognized as spam. The meta title, on the other hand, is important for increasing your site's rankings and the meta description is often picked up by the search engine to describe the link.
Myth #9: SEO requires frequent submission to all of the search engines This dog won't hunt, anymore. Don't know how many times spam has crossed my inbox touting submission to 1,000's of search engines, just $95/month. Making matters worse, the boss always finds delight in forwarding these emails to us. Truth is, it's no longer a factor; so don't waste your time and effort. What does matter is that the SEO work on your site is optimized for search engines. Most major search engines use 100 to 200 factors to determine rank.
Myth #8: A frequently updated site gets higher rankings
Truth is that frequent updates to your site may help with the "crawl rate" or how often search engine spiders check your site, but it doesn't help your ranking. Again, that's based on the content of your site and frequent updates won't matter if the content isn't more relevant to the search engines. Some of the highest ranking sites on the web are rarely if ever updated.
Myth #7: SEO copy must be 250 words in length
This one's a total myth or better yet myth-communication. Sure, 250 words is a nice amount of words for a web page and probably will get your message across. However, it doesn't mean a lick for search engine optimization. Optimizing a page for 3 to 5 keyword phrases on the other hand does make sense. Next!
Myth #6: Do Pay Per Click (PPC) ads help your SEO rankings?
©2009 Point It! Inc. All rights reserved. 2 No reproduction or reuse without permission. Top 10 SEO MYTHS
I still get asked if PPC ads help with SEO rankings. The funny thing is that just as many people are concerned that it will hurt vs. help. The answer is that one has nothing to do with the other. It's like public relations vs. advertising. I would say, however, that a good search engine marketing campaign synchronizes your SEO and PPC efforts to take advantage of terms that you want to rank highly on, but can't successfully with either one of these methods. Even if you do rank high with SEO, you may not be delivering the specific marketing message you want to your audience. With PPC, you can do that on the fly.
Myth #5: SEO is a function of IT
That used to be the thought back in the day. I consistently came across IT staff that managed SEO. It made sense-right?- SEO is the realm of programmers and geeks. Not! Since SEO typically requires web site development and modification, it certainly requires support from IT; but as a critical marketing function, should be driven by the goals, budgets and strategies of marketing. The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization's (SEMPO) research indicates that companies are no longer borrowing from non marketing budgets to fund their search efforts.
Myth #4: "Our site doesn't get a lot of visitors, so SEO wouldn't work for us"
This one never ceases to amaze me, but you'd be shocked by how many seemingly intelligent people utilize this thinking. I'm not really sure, but I guess it's a way to rati... [download for more]