The role of a search engine is to provide the searcher the most relevant content. So naturally it makes sense that you should do well by simply providing content on the internet that is relevant to your target market.
I recently read an article that was retweeted by @QuirkEducation from Daily SEO Tip that made me very happy to see that the old school tricks of the trade are slowly becoming an historical method of search engine optimisation.
In this article Christopher Holland highlights “7 widely believed myths of SEO” and I wanted to take some time to comment on my experiences with 5 of these SEO techniques.
1) Submit your websites to search engines
“It has been at least 5 years since this technique has been necessary and all you need to do is obtain a few backlinks and make sure your not blocking robots from crawling your website.”
I recently launched a website for a non-profit organization called LIV who have started a village for orphans and widows, where the website was indexed in about one day. This was achieved because the team at LIV sent and email to their loyal database announcing the new website. Someone on that mailing list linked back to the website and ‘magically’ we were indexed with Google. In the first two weeks the website was live it was already experiencing a substantial volume of search engine traffic.
2) Keyword Densities
“So instead of spamming, I recommend that you write great content targeted towards your visitors and to include your chosen keywords naturally”
My most successful online marketing campaigns have a strong backbone in creating content for people – not search engines. The result has alway been listings in search engines on relevant keyword searches.
3) Content Length
“Your content should be as long as it needs to be to tell the reader exactly what you need to.”
I couldn’t agree with this more. Real people want you to get to the point and stop wasting their time. Write your articles for people.
4) Keyword Rich Domain Name
Personal Experience: My “non keyword rich” domain name of www.mikesaunders.co.za ranks in the number two position on google for the term “social media coach” (number one for SA Google) above the key word rich domain www.socialmediacoachingcenter.com
5) Meta tags are no longer relevant
Meta tags may not be relevant but the following are extremely important to use in your website code:
- Page Titles
- Meta Descriptions
These fall into the metatag category and are incredibly important to present yourself inside the Google search once you are listed. A great title and description could make a great difference in your search engine traffic.
