Want your website to be listed higher in the search engine ranking results? Unless your site is already sitting in the number one spot, I’m sure the answer is yes – who wouldn’t want that? But Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated process, and there is so much mis-information and bad advice floating around, it can be difficult to know which tactics work, and which ones are nonsense.

Here is a list of five SEO myths that not only don’t work, they can get your website banned by the search engines if you use them!

1. “The more times I use a keyword on a web page, the better.”

   This myth can definitely get you in trouble with the search engines! Of course you should use a keyword in the content of your web page, but using it to many times on the same page can get you flagged for keyword spamming. Although there is no definitive rule on how much is too much, it’s generally thought that a keyword should have a density between 2% and 6%.

2. “Using the meta keyword tag will boost my rankings.”

   Wrong – the meta keyword tag is actually useless, and will not help your rankings one bit. There are other meta tags, however, like Title and Description, that are definitely used by the search engines in evaluating your web pages, but the keyword meta tag is not used at all for ranking web pages.

3. “Trading links or reciprocal links is a great way to build inbound links to my site.”

   The search engines look for naturally occurring links coming from quality sites, and their algorithms are quite good at telling the difference between natural links and reciprocal and 3-way linking schemes. Build your inbound links naturally using standard techniques, because reciprocal links are discounted by the search engines, and link “buying” can get you banned altogether.

4. “Submitting my site to hundreds of search engines is a good way to improve my rankings.”

   Not only is it unnecessary to submit your site to the search engines (the search engine spiders will discover your site on their own), submitting a site does not mean it will be listed in the search results. There are hundreds of factors that search engines consider when determining how to rank a site, but submission is not one of them.

5. “As the business owner, I’m the best person to choose the keywords I want to be listed for.”

   Although it may be appropriate for an owner to help select the list of “seed words” to use in SEO (seed words are the terms used to start the keyword research), you definitely want real-time data to tell you which keywords will perform the best for your business! For instance, you may think customers search for “ABC widgets”, but the data may show you that searchers actually typed in “blue widgets” or “big blue widgets” and never once typed in “ABC widgets”. Why would you waste time and effort optimizing for a term that nobody ever searches on?

We all want our business websites to show up in the top of the search results, but be careful – what you think you know might actually end up hurting you!

In case you haven’t noticed, Google recently unveiled a new design for its search results pages that gives users access to some new, interesting search options. The new design may not be immediately noticeable, but when you do a search from Google’s home page, you can now see a new, left-hand column on each results page.

At the top of the column are the different Google search “engines” (like images, videos, news, etc.). The next section in the column has a link called “Show search tools”, which expands to display a variety of new Google tools for people to use when looking for information.

The new search tools let users view results by criteria such as “time” (latest results, past 24 hours, etc.), “location” (nearby results), “related searches”, “sites with images”, etc., which may ultimately have a significant affect on your business’ search engine strategy. Why? Because with each new option a user selects, a different set of Google search results is displayed, based on the option that is selected.

So now that there are multiple new Google search options, does this mean that businesses must consider which Google search option(s) they wish to rank for, then optimize specifically for that option? Maybe.

The Importance of Real-Time Search

Real-time search was added to Google only a few months ago, and is the result of social sites like Facebook and Twitter becoming a major resource for users who wanted information that is minutes-old, not days, weeks, or months-old. Now that real-time search is even more accessible to users via the left-column options (e.g., blogs, news, discussions, “time” tools, etc.), social search has become even more important for businesses striving to rank well in Google.

Social search is all about visibility, meaning you need to have a presence on the social networking sites and get people talking about and / or sharing your content. You need to get people involved with you in order to be relevant in real-time search, and real-time search has already been shown to be a real-big factor in getting to the top of Google rankings.

Where Do You Want to Rank Today?

If you want to increase quality traffic from Google, it makes sense to optimize your pages for coverage in the search option categories that matter most to your business. For instance, if you operate a storefront in your town, you may want to show up in the local search (and “nearby”) results. Or, if you’re offering a time-sensitive discount or have tied a promotion to an event, then you may want to be included in the “time” results for past 24 hours or past week.

Know Your Audience!

The key to ranking well in Google – regardless of the search option category being used – is to find the right keyword phrases to use in optimizing your site. Do some actual research, don’t just guess! If you don’t know how to research and find relevant keywords, then hire a professional to help you. You must know what people are actually typing into that search box, or your efforts will do little to drive targeted traffic to your site or deliver new customers and leads. The more you know about the keywords your target market uses to find products and services like yours, the more you will know exactly where you need to focus your efforts in Google.

Hurry Up and Wait

Although Google’s new search tools are a fairly new development, experts are already weighing in with their opinions on how (or if) these new search options will have an impact on a business’ SEO strategy. The early consensus seems to be that yes, the new options will have an effect to some degree, but it’s probably too soon to know to what extent.

In the meantime, the best strategy is to keep your site updated with fresh, relevant content, create a strong presence on the social networking sites, build new inbound links, select targeted keyword phrases, and optimize your site using standard, white-hat practices that will help your web site be read and indexed by the search engine spiders. Then sit back and watch the results unfold over the next several months to see if the new Google search options indeed affect your SEO.

When consumers today search online for the products and services your business offers, you are not only competing with other web sites, you’re also competing with social networking profiles, online videos, blog posts, Twitter tweets, photo sharing sites, online news outlets, etc., all blended together on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

So how can your business optimize for all these different types of media now being included in the search results? By getting vertical.

Getting vertical is simply another way to think about your search engine strategy. Yes, you still need to effectively optimize your web site to do well in the search results. But in addition to that, you now must also optimize for the search “verticals” that contribute to blended search results as well.

For instance, Google determines its blended results (in part) by analyzing what ranks well in its search verticals, including image search, Google News, video search, and social networking information from Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed. That’s a lot of verticals to consider! But optimizing for blended search means that you need to have at least some sort of presence on these verticals to get Google’s attention and boost your position in the search rankings.

Social Networks

Since the major search engines now include real-time information from popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube, your search engine rankings can definitely benefit from implementing a social networking strategy. By participating on social networking sites, you contribute a constant stream of fresh information that not only benefits your customers and followers, but also helps get (and keep) the attention of the search engines as they gather new information from these real-time sources.

The key to being successful on the social networks, however, is to implement an integrated strategy that combines all of your social marketing efforts together with your web site and with the other marketing activities you may already have established. (See our web site or blog posts on Integrated Social Marketing (ISM)® for more details on this concept).

Online Videos

Videos can be optimized for blended search, whether on a web site, in a blog post, on a social networking site, or uploaded to a video sharing site like YouTube. In fact, video sharing sites already have built-in features that make it easy for users to share videos with friends and followers. They also allow viewers to leave comments or forward video links to their lists of contacts.

When using videos in your search strategy, be sure to add relevant descriptions and title tags to your videos, and rename the video files to include your targeted keywords in the filename for an added boost. Re-use your videos in as many places on the web as you can, including embedding them in your web pages and integrating them with your Google Place pages to help build authority for the videos as well.

News Content

Another source of blended search results comes from content found in online news from mainstream media outlets, in Google News, and on a variety of online newswire services. One way for small businesses to get online news coverage is to submit press releases to online media outlets, both paid and free, as a way to build quality inbound links and get additional exposure online. You should also try to include video and images in your press releases whenever possible. Multi-media content tends to do well – especially in Google News – and it provides additional press release content that can be indexed in the search databases.

Images and Photos

There are several ways that you can use images to contribute to your results in blended search. First, your images and photos should have keyword-rich file names, such as “keyword.jpg” or “my_company_at_eventname.jpg” whenever possible. Also, be sure to use keywords in your HTML image alt tags and in the descriptions and captions of the photos as well. Then, you can share these photos on your web site, on your blog, on your Facebook page (and other social profiles), and upload them to photo sharing sites like Flickr. Encourage your visitors to leave comments, and also leave your own comments, since this type of participation will also help provide fresh content and gain attention from the search engines as they gather real-time search information as well.

Think Vertical

So if you are serious about improving your business’ positions in the search engine rankings, you will need to expand the way you think about optimizing your entire search profile online. The more you can do to optimize the search “verticals” (like social networking, video, images, etc.), the more influence you will have over what the search engines know about your business and its relevance to searchers today. Thinking vertical can help you stay competitive now that blended search means competing with more than just other web sites.

We are often asked how long it will take before an optimized web site will start showing up in the search engine results, but of course that’s a difficult question with a complicated answer. Seeing results in the search engines depends on many factors, and each web site’s circumstances are unique. However, here are some points to consider in determining how quickly your site will start showing results in the search engines:

• How many inbound links does your site have? Google definitely cares about not only how many inbound links your site has, but also the quality of the sites those links come from. For instance, inbound links from an authority site with a topic related to yours will benefit you way more than reciprocal links or links from a site that is unrelated (or worse – a link farm). And paid links are a big no-no altogether.
• How old is your web site? Believe it or not, the age of your web site matters to the search engines. New sites come and go all the time, and the search engines want to make sure that your site is established and stable before they rank it in their results. However, a new site with lots of inbound links will quickly get the attention of the search engines, since they assume that if others think your site is worth linking to, then it must be valuable.
• How “fresh” is your content? A static site that never gets updated is not all that interesting to the search engines, no matter how great the content may be. The search engines want to provide their users with sites that are well-maintained and contain up-to-date information. Since there are so many sites to choose from, the search engines will choose the ones that have the latest information.
• How many inbound links do your competitors have? If the top-ranking web sites have 10,000 inbound links and your site has only a few, you have some work to do. You may not need to have exactly the same number of inbound links as the top sites, but you definitely need to be close. And of course, having more is even better.
• How competitive is the keyword you are targeting? This is a tough one, because the more competitive your keyword is, the more sites will be trying to rank for that same keyword. If your keywords are highly competitive, you may want to do some research and optimize for similar but less-competitive variations, at least to start with. Then as you build additional inbound links and add fresh content to your site, you can add back the competitive keywords.
• How visible is your business online – overall? Do you have an existing social media marketing strategy in place? Does your company have a blog? Send e-newsletters? Submit online press releases? Syndicate articles? All of these things can contribute to your online visibility, and will help you naturally build inbound links as people discover your content and start linking to it. Plus, the more places your business shows up online, the more opportunities the search engines have to find you.

Getting good rankings in the search engines doesn’t stop after the optimization work is completed, that’s really just the beginning. You must consistently add fresh content to your site and build as many quality inbound links as possible so the search engines will notice your site. There are no specific timeframes to determine how long it will take to see results; however, the more you can do to show the search engines that your site is a valuable resource, the faster they will share that with their users.

One of the most important elements in optimizing your web site to rank well in the search engines is to select the right keywords and then use them appropriately on your web pages. Sounds pretty simple, but with all the bad advice floating around on the web today, we thought you might appreciate some simple, tried-and-true tips for correctly using keywords on your web site. Here are some common “do’s and don’ts” that can help you avoid mistakes and improve your search engine optimization results:

DO research your keywords to find out what users are actually searching on in the search engines right now. Be sure to review your selected keywords periodically, since the terms that searchers use will change over time.

DON’T just guess which keywords you think searchers would use to find your site; you know your business so well that you may overlook the phrases that “outsiders” use to describe what you do.

DO limit your keywords to between two and four per page. This will allow for more natural-sounding text, and will help keep the page focused on a single topic.

DON’T cram as many keywords as possible onto a web page. This will only dilute the effectiveness and value of each keyword, and can lead to page content that is confusing for visitors.

DO select keywords that match your business and services. Keeping a narrow focus will help drive the most qualified traffic to your web site.

DON’T use keywords that are only loosely related to your business. For instance, if your site is about auto engine repair, don’t include keywords like “auto body repair” or “oil changes”, even if these terms pull in a lot of traffic. You don’t want to waste your visitors’ time, or attract visitors who are not looking for engine repairs.

DO write keyword-rich titles, descriptions, and link text, since these elements are taken into consideration by the search engines and can help improve your rankings.

DON’T count on the keywords meta tag to help you – Google, as well as other major search engines, have repeatedly said that they do not use the keywords in this tag when ranking sites. You need to know which elements are useful to the search engines and focus your time and attention on those.

DO write content that reads well to your human visitors. Make this a priority, because the text must make sense to your target audience first and foremost. Write your text so the keywords seem natural and they don’t “stick out” as obvious keywords.

DON’T use keywords in your content at the expense of readability for your visitors. Sure, you need to appropriately mix your keywords into the content of your pages, but nobody wants to read awkward, nonsensical content that has been obviously stuffed with keywords to please the search engines. It can also make you look amateurish and can damage credibility with your target audience.

DO pay attention to how often you use your keywords on a page; you need to use them enough to show that the page’s subject matches the keywords you are targeting for that page.

DON’T over-use the keywords in the text on your page; high keyword density levels may get your page flagged for keyword spamming by the search engines.

By following these “do’s and don’ts” when working with your keywords, you can avoid some common errors while improving your visitors’ experience, your optimization process, and ultimately your results in the search engine rankings!