Since its inception, the internet has continued to expand at an almost exponential rate, this meant that in order for people to efficiently find the information they wanted online, the search engine became a must. After some time, search engines started looking for better ways to find information, and that’s when search engine optimization started. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is highly technical and ever changing, made even more so by competing search engines developing continuously more complex algorithms.

In response to this, SEO consultants, web experts and marketers, began to spend a lot of time and effort on understanding the nature of search engines. They started testing a variety of methods based on web science and the rules of W3C, many of these methods began to filter through to the online community as a whole.

However, a lot of these methods have little or no scientific basis, and have been carried from blog to blog, creating many myths.

In other cases, a method which was true in the past is now obsolete or irrelevant due to changes in search engine algorithms.

Many of our clients routinely ask us about these SEO myths, which are most commonly SEO mistakes which can harm your SEO campaign rather than boost your ranking.

With the aim of dispelling some of these myths and participating in the debate, we have listed a number of these common misconceptions in this article.

SEO top ranking is an overnight result and it’s guaranteed.

Online marketing takes a lot of money, time and patience. Getting your website to number one or even to the first page of results is only one of the steps, and it is almost never going to happen over night.

If anyone tells you that they guarantee top search results by this Thursday, they probably not the ones you want to have working on your website, especially with all the changes that have been going on with search engines lately.

There is no need for further work after you have optimized your website.

SEO was, is, and always will be an on-going process. Logic dictates that an ever-changing database of information ( the search engine) requires recurring and systematic website optimization strategies and tactics. However, the sooner you have a solid SEO structure in place on your current running site: the fewer headaches you will have in your SEO campaigns.

Content is not as important as keywords.

Yes, keywords are important. But content is also important. Search engines rank your website based on your keyword density; which put simply is how many times a particular keyword is mentioned in your sites content. However, the most important base of measuring your content’s success in SEO is the uniqueness and relevance of your content, which means your content is in fact the most important element of your campaign as a whole.

Country specific (LTD) domain names are better to rank in that country.

Search engines keep updating their algorithms constantly as mentioned above. It used to be very helpful to have a (.AE) domain for instant, to rank in Google United Arab Emirates results several years ago. Recently Google has made it less important to have a country specific domain to rank in Google internationally. It has yet to be established whether this trend will continue or reverse.

You shouldn’t put your logo image inside an H1 tag.

There are so many debates on this; they even have a poll site for the debate. I always point at the W3C site in my arguments with this regard; as you’ll find their logo tagged with H1. Moreover; check out Matt Cutts’ personal blog (The Google Webspam Chief), he’s doing the same as well.

I rest my case!

Take it easy, you can always trick search engines!

Well, yeah anyone can stuff in irrelevant keywords and tweak their site for search engines. There are many ways.

However; in our response to that: Yes you can, but you shouldn’t! And if you do, if you abuse SEO and ‘play dirty’; you’ll obviously get penalized and blocked, if not today, then definitely tomorrow! It has happened before, and trust me, it’s not cool!

At the end; Search Engines are looking for unique content, and they reward it with high rankings. So it is anything but "tricking" search engines!

SEO is about creating relevant, informative and rich websites, with unique content and a great user experience, as well as encouraging the sharing and distribution of great content to drive organic publicity and links back to your site. If you stick to that; search engines will love you! And increase your ranking! And that’s what it’s all about...

Contact us now if you like to know more about SEO, or if you are looking for some consultative advice.