Not everything you hear from supposed SEO experts are true. The problem with this industry, is everyone has an opinion, and in most cases there is no way to prove one way or another what's right and what's wrong.
Even the most universally respected and well known SEO experts find it hard to agree amongst themselves how important one factor is over another.
And because this industry is one where opinion is often so divided, and there is so much open discussion, it is very easy for SEO myths to spread on message boards and forums like wild fire.
Below, I've listed some of the most common and widespread SEO Myths:
SEO Myth #1:
You need to submit to search engines regularly - No you don't! Actually you don't need to submit to search engines at all. So long as your site is able to be indexed, the search engines will find you all by themselves. That's what they do! You can help your site along, by getting at least one back link, but even that isn't vital. Submitting to search engines isn't wrong or bad, but it's not essential. What you should be careful of, is regular submitting to search engines, such as every week or every month. This can be interpreted as trying to spam the search engines and may result in penalties. The best practice is simply to add a sitemap.xml file and let them find and index you that way.
SEO Myth #2:
You must update page content frequently - Get real! Are you seriously expected to update and change pages regularly when you've got 5000 pages on your site? Once a page has been optimized properly and effectively, you can leave it alone and never touch it again. If it's doing it's job and keeping your users happy, why would you need to change it? The only kind of content updates you should concentrate on, is adding new pages with new content, so that your site is constantly updated and always growing.
SEO Myth #3:
You need a site map to rank better - A site map has absolutely nothing to do with page ranking. The only reason why a site map is a good idea, is because it helps the search engines index all your pages. It has no impact whatsoever on ranking. Best practice is to use a sitemap.xml file, but even that isn't essential for indexing. So long as your site is constructed properly and all your links flow naturally, and every page can be access from a correct linking pattern, your site and all your pages will be indexed with or without a site map. Ranking and site maps don't relate in any way!
SEO Myth #4:
PPC ads will help/hurt your natural ranking - Really? The fact that 50% of people argue that they help your rankings, and the other 50% say they hurt your rankings, should be enough to tell you that both are wrong. PPC ads on any site or search engine make no difference to your ranking in the natural results in any way. The two things are not related in any way. PPC are "adverts"...... they don't carry link weight, PR or relevance with them, when they point to your site.
SEO Myth #5:
The goal of SEO is to be #1 on page 1 - Actually the goal of SEO is to provide the highest return on investment by bringing the most targeted traffic to a website which will convert into sales. Being #1 for a keyword that generates no sales, even if it attracts 50,000 per day, is a complete waste of time. Most new webmasters get caught up in thinking being number 1 for the most competitive keyword is the be all and end all. Smart SEO is about returns and profits!
SEO Myth #6:
The Meta keyword tag is useless - Just because Google have said they pay no attention to the keyword meta tag, doesn't mean the thing is useless. Ask and Yahoo definitely still use it, as do many of the smaller search engines. Google is NOT the only search engine, and is NOT responsible for 90% of internet searches as some sites like to claim. Microsoft are now the only search engine that publish recent data about how many search queries they process, and they process 3 Billion searches per month. Do you really want to miss out on an extra ranking factor against billions of searches just because everyone else jumps when Google say "boo"?
SEO Myth #7:
Page Rank (PR) is the most important factor for back links - Actually Page Rank is not something you should be overly concerned with, because the search engines aren't even that concerned with it. Google's own advice is to not get too hung up on this. It's so un-important that they only update PR a couple of times a year. If it was that important, they'd update it every day. PR is one of over 200 ranking factors their algorithm use when assessing non-linguistic (off page) factors for ranking a page. To say PR is more important than any other Off page factor is a fallacy. This is probably the biggest myth of them all. PR is an easily identifiable factor that new webmaster love to jump on. Truth is, there's far more important things to worry about, such as the relevance of the site linking to you.
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