SEO Rumors and Guesses Abound in the Internet Marketing World!
Are you being told that your website pages must have a keyword in the first paragraph and a keyword in the last paragraph? Are you measuring your keyword density on every page of your website? Has your website developer told you that you need to register your domain for at least three years? Have you been told that your keywords have to be in bold type? Did your website developer tell you that buying lots of domains, with keywords in them, and pointing those domains to your website, would bring you a higher Google ranking?
These are all rumors I’ve heard over the last few years. The search engine optimization world is an easy place for rumors to start and to spread, because there’s little definitive authority to separate fact from fiction. I’m also a lawyer and in the law, you have statutes and you have case law to give you guidance as to the law for a certain situation. In most areas of science, you have experiments and hypothesis testing leading to experimental evidence. In medicine, you have studies to prove or disprove a drug’s effectiveness and safety. Unfortunately, there are lots of opinions and very little experimental evidence in the SEO world.
So what’s the solution? You or your SEO consultant should be doing research using the most authoritative sources possible. For me that means following a trusted circle of very well-known and very well-respected bloggers and publications like Search Engine Land, SEOMoz and Wordtracker. It also means taking the time to read information provided by Google and by Bing — the two major search engines. Matt Cutts from Google and Duane Forrester from Bing are interviewed on a variety of topics related to search engine optimization, and they try to be as helpful as possible in providing guidance without giving away detailed information about their ranking algorithms.
Based on this sort of research, all of the factors in the opening paragraph are overblown as SEO tactics. Matt Cutts released a Google Webmaster Tools video in which he said that keyword density is the most overblown SEO tactic and another video in which he debunked the “domain registration” tactic. A Search Engine Land article I read yesterday confirmed that buying keyword-rich domains to point to your website probably provides no benefit to your site.
So the bottom line is to do your research or ensure that your SEO consultant is doing research to separate fact from fiction in moving your website up in search rankings. It takes time to do that research and that’s part of what you’re paying for in hiring a qualified SEO consultant.
Good luck and if you have questions or need help, please call me at 281-343-3284 or send me an email through my contact form. IX Brand SEO Services Company works with small businesses located around SE Texas — in Richmond, Sugar Land, and throughout Metro Houston as well as several other States. We’ll look forward to working with you if you need some assistance!
