Common SEO myths you need to be aware of

Posted in SEO by DB

I come across quite a few SEO myths especially while browsing through forums and blogs While I’m sure all of us understand the most common SEO myths regarding Meta Tags, Page Rank, Search Engine Submissions, I’ve listed 5 that I’ve seen being discussed quite often.

By the way all of the following myths are false.

Avoid more than one hyphen in your domain name.

The general perception is that Google will brand your site as a spam site if you have too many hyphens in your domain name. In reality, while having too many hyphens will certainly flag your website for a manual inspection, as long as your site content passes visual inspection you have nothing to worry about.

Traffic affects your website ranking.

While increasing number of webmasters use Google Analytics to track visitors and Google certainly will keep tabs and give you some brownie points based on popularity and the follow on perceived authority, the fact of the matter is Google simply cannot afford to rank websites based on traffic. Google primary aim is to display the best and the most relevant content to its users. Lot of traffic does not mean the latest and the most relevant content.

Link out to Quality sites and your ranking will rise.

Linking out to quality sites will set the tone and the relevancy of your content but it will never bring about an increase in page rank or authority. But what is for certain is linking out to poor and spammy neighborhoods will most certainly destroy any ranking you might have had.

Hosting on a Shared IP is a negative factor.

While being hosted on a dedicated IP is a definite plus, Google will not penalize you for being hosted on a shared IP Address. Now if you start linking out to other websites hosted on the same IP Address then you will have bigger problems to worry about. Being classified as a link farm is the last thing you want to happen to you.

Incoming Links from Link farms and Bad neighborhoods will affect your rankings.

Again not true. There are many such scenarios and you can simply apply the same rule to them all. Unless Google can categorically prove that you and only you, the website owner was responsible for the actions, Google simply cannot penalize you. If the above were true just imagine how easy it would be to manipulate the SERP’s. All I would need to do is get a dozen link farms to link to my closest competitor.

Read and educating yourself about the right facts of SEO is important to say the least. The direct way to learn is to implement the ideas and thoughts that you feel are right on a website that you can afford to lose. An easier and quicker option would be to bounce these ideas against many of the top ranked sites. You can learn a lot from your competitor, there is no greater source of free information for you to learn from than the first 10 sites listed on Google for your target keyword.

Common SEO Myths You Need To Be Aware Of | Web Hosting Demystified