What are the top SEO misinformation?
This video talks about some examples regarding SEO misinformation that has not played any part in getting high rankings for websites.
So, let’s get to the main points regarding which the video talks:
- The first example of SEO msisinformation is that according to some SEO specialists, if their clients are unhappy with their work results and post something regarding their company on any customer review sites, they automatically get links from those sites which in result improves their rankings. If that was the case everyone would’ve been abusing their clients to get better rankings.
- In fact, GetSatfisfaction.com (a review site) posted a blog post clarifying that any links that are posted on such sites carry “no follow” attribute which means such links are not endorsed by these review sites. Therefore, they get dropped from the href, no links flow through anchor text and so on. As a result, such links don’t contribute to site rankings.
- Another example of SEO misinformation is that some SEO people are of view that Google’s Web Spam team isn’t working really hard. However, the team has been busy on issues of hacking where people try to hack the sites and add links, Trojans etc. and the good news is that hacking has now been controlled.
- Third misconception: Only links matter. Some people believe that they only need links and nothing else is really important. However, it is important to add good content, make your site better crawl-able, discoverable, better layout of the site, whether you have good internal links and lastly, whether your content contains words that people search.
- Fourth misinformation SEOs have is that the keywords Meta tags play a very important role in SEO rankings but that is not the case and Google doesn’t take keywords Meta tags into consideration when it comes to the Google search rankings.
- Fifth and final misconception that some people have is that Google’s Web Spam team is either completely algorithmic (automated) or completely manual. The fact is that the team reserves the right to manually delist the sites if they get any spam complaints regarding a site or detect that something’s wrong with the site. So, there is a dedicated manual team for such tasks, in fact every other major search engine has such teams to cope up with the spam. The team also provides training data to engineers who work on removing spam, so it’s good that there is a manual team and engineers as well working on removing spam content and it’s a good approach by Google.
So, what can you do in the light of this information regarding improvement of your rankings? Let’s see:
- Forget that any unhappy client would leave you a review which in turn will get you good links.
- Keep in mind that Google’s Web Spam team is always active even when they don’t seem very active. Moreover, Google has a manual as well as algorithmic team to handle and remove the spam.
- It is really important to focus on on-page optimization as well as off-page optimization by writing good quality content with highly searched keywords and remember that only links are no good.
- Don’t put a lot of your focus on keywords Meta tags. It’s better to add them but they don’t really affect your rankings.
Very good information! I realize now that I’ve been focusing too heavily on links. I need to build better content to go along with them!
Hi Caria Hoppe,
I would say QUALITY content instead of only content.
And QUALITY links is important too.
=)
It sounds like your first point, about poor reviews on customer review sites leading to increased traffic, may have started as a way for sites to try to strong arm unhappy costumers and dissuade them from leaving a bad review.
Funny how some lies take on a life of their own.
Hi Holly,
I believe Google do have human to check on the links.
If its a “complain” link, it should not add value to the original company.