5 Lies the SEO Gurus Told You
#1: Meta tags are super important.
Meta tags have been abused by spammers to the point that search engines just don’t put much stock in them anymore. True, your meta description could be important, if Google chooses to use it in the search results, but oftentimes this isn’t the case. In fact, Google’s very own Matt Cutts said on his blog: “Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in our scoring at all. It’s just a waste of time to throw a lot of phrases into the keywords meta tag. It would be a better use of your effort to do things like speed up your website, because that can directly improve the usability of your site even independently of SEO.” (Read more here.)
#2: SEO firms can be endorsed by Google.
Lie! Anyone who tells you they’ve been approved or endorsed by Google for SEO purposes is a fraud. Google doesn’t endorse ANY SEO company (although they do provide certification for Analytics and AdWords).
#3: Your PageRank score determines your Google ranking.
This is a commonly held SEO myth. No, your PageRank does NOT determine your Google ranking. Having a high PageRank is great, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get high rankings across the board, and it doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed tons of traffic and conversions. Google takes into account more than 200 different factors when it ranks a website, so PageRank only plays at most 1/200th of a role in your overall ranking.
#4: Using Google AdWords affects your SEO.
There are a lot of (competing) theories out there that using Google AdWords will help or hurt your SEO efforts. They’re all wrong. As Google has said time and time again, “It’s important to know that Google’s advertising programs are entirely independent of the unpaid search results. So being an AdWords advertiser (or AdSense publisher) doesn’t affect the inclusion or ranking of your site in the Google search index. Put another way, being an advertiser will neither help nor harm one’s inclusion or ranking” (from “Inside AdWords”).
#5: Googlebot can’t read CSS.
Wrong. It does in fact read CSS, so if you’re thinking about using CSS to hide your spam tactics (like hidden divs), think again! Here’s a great example of someone who thought they could trick Google using CSS. Don’t worry, Matt Cutts set them straight.
Category: Marketing, SEO, Website Tips
