Search Engine Optimization Secrets, Myths & Facts

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be thought of as “word-of-mouth” for the Internet and it matters because there are litterly over 270 million unique websites out there, with over two billion people on the Internet of the world’s population, and Google alone performs over a billion searches a day.  Those are the Facts!

SEO is also relevant because top search results receive 40% of the clicks from users as a result of being at the top.  Second search results receive only 10%, third search results receive less at 8.5%, and the percentage of clicks dramatically declines quickly from that point onward.  What we are trying to emphasis as Toronto Internet Marketing Gurus fighting SEO for Toronto companies daily is that if you are not on the first page of search results, chances are that no one is finding you.

With the in mind, search has a massive long tail, with respect to keywords. Over 70% of Google searches are for keywords searched five times or less per month. The result: you do not need to be number one for generic searches in order for you to be successful.

Case in point= For example, you might not be able to get to the top spot for the keyword search: “SEO”, but you might manage to get the top spot for “Organic SEO Toronto”.

Here are the top 25 SEO myths according to our Toronto SEO Gurus:

  1. Our ‘Toronto SEO firm’ is endorsed/approved by Google. – That is entirely false for any company to say that!
  2. Don’t use Google Analytics because they will spy on you and use that information against you.  Ridiculous…
  3. Your PageRank score, as reported by Google’s toolbar server, is highly correlated to your Google rankings. Unjustifiable based on Google’s secret ranking algorithm.
  4. XML Sitemaps will boost your Google SEO rankings. Google will use your sitemaps file for content discovery not thoroughly impacting ‘rankings’.
  5. There is no such thing as being ranked #1 anymore because everyone sees different results. Search for yourself. Re-run your search queries (the second time adding &pws=0) to the end of Google SERP URL notice any shift??
  6. Meta tags will boost your rankings. Optimizing your websites meta keywords is a may not be a complete waste of time.  However tags — such as meta description, meta author, and meta robots are given any true weight in the rankings algorithm.
  7. Include a meta robots tag specifying index, follow. This is a corollary to the myth immediately preceding. It’s totally unnecessary. The engines all assume they are allowed to index and follow unless you specify otherwise.
  8. Targeted keywords tucked away in HTML comment tags and title attributes (of IMG and A HREF tags.) assist SEO. Since when have comment tags or title attributes been given any SEO weight for Toronto companies?
  9. Having country-specific sites creates “duplicate content” issues in Google. Google’s algorithm is intelligent enough to present your co.uk site to Google United Kingdom users and your .ca site to Google Canada users.  Set the geographic target setting in Google Webmaster Tools..simple!
  10. You can keep search engines from indexing pages linked-to with Javascript links.There are many documented cases of Google following JavaScript-based links. Google engineers have stated that they are crawling JavaScript links more-and-more. Of course, don’t rely on Google parsing your JavaScript links, but don’t assume it will choke on them either.
  11. Googlebot doesn’t read CSS.  Google certainly scans CSS for black-hat SEO spam tactics like ‘hidden divs’.
  12. End your URLs in .html.  Clearly this hasn’t made a difference!
  13. Boost the Google SEO rankings of your home page for a targeted term by including that term in the anchor text of internal links.  Vigorous SEO testing done by SEOmoz found that the anchor text of your “Home” links is largely ignored.
  14. Update your home page frequently (e.g. daily.) Plenty of stale home pages rank just fine, thank you very much- however Google’s Panda is aware of “freshness”.
  15. Trading links helps boost PageRank and rankings. Reciprocal links are easy for an algorithm to catch and to discount it’s SEO.  Simply avoid it!
  16. Linking out (such as to Google.com) helps rankings.It’s the other way around, i.e. getting links to your site from high PR websites makes all the difference!
  17. URLs in your links selectively and only for spiders.  Don’t listen to anyone!
  18. Meta descriptions, Google uses it in the snippet.  Not the case, and can vary.
  19. Bolding of words in a Google listing signifies that they were considered in SEO rankings determination. “KWiC” in Information Retrieval circles — is there purely for usability purposes.
  20. H1 tags are a crucial element for SEO. Research by SEOmoz shows minute correlation between the presence of H1 tags and rankings. Still, you should write good H1 headings, but do it primarily for usability and accessibility, not so much for SEO.
  21. Unique ranking signals exist for Google Mobile Search, “XHTML Mobile”.  Google Mobile Search results found on your Apple iPhone 5 for example mirror those of Google Web Search.
  22. SEO is a ‘black art’.  Entirely false!
  23. The Disallow directive in robots.txt can get pages de-indexed from Google. To keep pages out of Google’s index, use the Noindex robots.txt directive or the meta robots noindex tag — NOT this Disallow directive.
  24. SEO is a one-time activity you complete and are then done with. The “set it and forget it” misconception and will not get you ROI- Return on investment.
  25. Automated SEO is black-hat or spammy. Without automation, it would be difficult to impossible for the enterprise company to scale their SEO efforts across the mass of content they have published on the Web.  However, we are #1 in Organic SEO for Toronto Companies by not implementing false hopes in automated performance.

Now we get to the Top Secrets of SEO for our Toronto companies and viewers out there that will improve website visibility

  1. Quality, engaging SEO keyword optimized- unquestionably #1.
  2. Website architecture/hierarchy -crucially important
  3. Avoid Adobe Flash period- Google simple identifies the many website pages as one!
  4. Follow Google’s Webmaster guidelines
  5. Create keyword rich ‘Linkbait’
  6. Utilize Social Media Marketing effectively to spread links
  7. Post news releases on public relations sites such as PRWeb.comPRNewswire.com, and PR.com
  8. Search engines (Google) place great importance on title tags when determining a page’s relevancy to a query enhance your SEO
  9. Add Google Analytics to each page of your website
  10. Avoid duplicate content from your website an from others

By: Colin Bhimsen

SEO Company Toronto, Search Engine Optimization Guru Boosting Organic Website Rankings: Increasing PROFIT - Searchandfind.ca Achieve Highest SEO Now! Increase Conversions & CTR Via PPC Management. Colin Bhimsen Google+ Follow Searchandfind.ca Twitter: Toronto SEO Website: Toronto SEO Company

 

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