As Search Engine Optimisation becomes more widely recognised and evolves in order to keep pace with ever-changing search engine algorithms and criteria, we come across many widely held beliefs about SEO which are either no longer relevant or incorrect. Here are some of the common SEO myths and the real truth behind them.

All you need to do to ensure search engine optimisation is to repeat your keywords over and over

Website optimization is not about getting as many occurrences of keywords into your pages as possible at the expense of the potential customer’s experience. A website which is stuffed with the same word or phrase again and again will not only put customers off, because it is difficult to read and often doesn’t make sense, it also puts search engines off too. If the content of your website isn’t relevant to your keywords, it won’t take the search engines too long to work it out and drop you down or completely off their listings.

Choosing the right keywords is vital in Website Optimization. If you pick keywords or phrases which are too generic then you run the risk of having too much competition e.g. “bicycles”. However, if you choose keywords that narrow down the search but are still a reasonably popular choice for those searching, e.g. “mountain bikes Manchester” then you are much more likely to be higher on the list of results because there are less businesses in that category to be in competition with. There are several useful free keyword suggestion tools available online to help generate ideas about your own potential keywords and help your business achieve a high level of search engine optimization.

Meta tags are all that matters when trying to achieve website optimization

This may have had some truth to it in the past, but due to abuse of the meta tag system, search engines now mostly ignore them completely. It is much more important to use relevant keywords and copy in your website content so that it can be easily read and indexed by search engines. Putting keywords into meta tags won’t make much difference as the content is what is important to search engines. Titling your individual pages appropriately certainly won’t do any harm though and helps the search engines to read and index your website’s pages more easily.

The only search engine that matters is Google

Although Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine worldwide, it is not the only one that potential customers will use and therefore you should ensure that your Search Engine Optimisation takes other engines into account rather than just being specifically tailored to Google. Yahoo and MSN are also popular search engines and although most of the major engines use similar criteria when searching for results, there are subtle differences, which is why you can get results in different orders through different search engines.

The way to achieve the best possible Search Engine Optimization and make your website appeal to most engines is by following the general criteria of all major search engines. This basically means that your website’s content needs to be easily readable and relevant to whatever product your website is selling.

Getting your website up the rankings is not really going to make a difference to your online sales unless your website is optimised for the customer and not just the search engine. A good SEO company will be able to maximise the impact your website has on search engine listings with their specific experience of search engine optimisation. They will also be able to maintain the balance between search engine listings and making a visit to your website a user-friendly experience for customers, giving them exactly what they were looking for when they started their search.

Look our for Part 1 and Part 2 of our SEO Myth-busting blog.

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