Common SEO Myths (These are UNTRUE)

[jrafique]

* Outbound links improve your ranking
* Submitting your site to the search engines too many times will get you banned
* Links from .edu and .gov sites are worth more then links from other TLDs
* Pages with .php extensions don't rank as well as pages with .html extensions
* Search engines won't index pages with query strings/all query strings are not search engines friendly
* Using seo software will get your site penalized
* Too many hyphens in your domain name will cause the search engines to label your site as spam
* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking
* Being a shared IP address will hurt your rankings

[x3mario]

* Outbound links improve your ranking

This is really untrue. It can also decrease your pr.

[Rose.fire]

Submitting your site to the search engines too many times will get you banned
- Yes you can, but submitting repeatedly to some directories will get you banned.

Too many hyphens in your domain name will cause the search engines to label your site as spam
- Are you talking about domain name or URL? Too many hyphens in URL will make search engines to identify certain sites from the domains.

[jrafique]

- Are you talking about domain name or URL? Too many hyphens in URL will make search engines to identify certain sites from the domains.

Sorry I mean URL.

[jreseo]

* Outbound links improve your ranking

Actually, they can help by improving the quality and relevancy of your site. I've seen rankings improve when quality, relevant links are added.

* Submitting your site to the search engines too many times will get you banned

Yes it can.

* Links from .edu and .gov sites are worth more then links from other TLDs

Given that most .edu and .gov sites have good authority and page rank, they really do help. It's not so much the TLD being edu or gov, but the authority of those sites is huge.

* Pages with .php extensions don't rank as well as pages with .html extensions

Correct. One right so far.

* Search engines won't index pages with query strings/all query strings are not search engines friendly

It depends. They will if the page is duplicate content, URL too complex, etc etc.

* Using seo software will get your site penalized

Gotta really abuse this, but it can happen.

* Too many hyphens in your domain name will cause the search engines to label your site as spam

There is evidence this is true.

* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking

Hard to say, but search engines do see a certain traffic metrics (e.g., SERP clicks and tool bars, plus public metrics such as Alexa) and could use them.

* Being a shared IP address will hurt your rankings

Actually it can, but it is rare.

The problem here is you can't just state myths vs facts. In the real world, especially with SEO, things are much subtler than that.

[kronikmedia]

Some search engine marketing experts believe that a website should be submitted to search engines atleast once every 2 months or so. I am not too sure of this but do belivee that occasional resubmission can do no harm as long as it is not too soon. With regards to outbound links; I pesonally do not emphasise either way. I have heard though that outbound linking to a few good sites can be good.

[x3mario]

* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking

Really untrue. It's the backlinks and not the traffic.

[jreseo]

* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking

Really untrue. It's the backlinks and not the traffic.

I disagree -- you can't discount the idea of traffic being a factor in rankings. Think about it: link and content spam is so prevalent now, if you were a search engineer looking for other ways to determine if a site was a quality site, wouldn't you consider traffic as a factor? Especially if you have things like toolbars, your own browser, PPC statistics, conversion data, etc at your fingertips? Look at the data Google (and even Yahoo and MSN) have now, and think about what they could do with it. Traffic is absolutely a metric that could be used.

It is certainly hard to prove one way or the other, but I would certainly not dismiss this as a factor.

Think forward and position for the future, not backwards to platitudes like "SEO Myths".

[jrafique]

Really untrue. It's the backlinks and not the traffic.

mario you didn't read the topic Title with care. It is "Common Seo Myths (These are Untrue)"

So if there is written "Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking" then it means its a myth which is untrue.

[internutonthelo]

* Using seo software will get your site penalized

* Traffic is a factor in a page's ranking

I'm pretty sure many sites use seo softwares to generate more traffic.

Traffic is definitely a factor in a page's ranking. It's an important criteria when it comes to the relevancy of a website.

[jrafique]

I'm pretty sure many sites use seo softwares to generate more traffic.
Traffic is definitely a factor in a page's ranking. It's an important criteria when it comes to the relevancy of a website.

Page Rank as explained by google:

Quote:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

[jrafique]

I hope last post will make everyone clear.

[lindamoodbell]

Thanks for sharing valuable inputs in seo factors

[Jenniferlinn]

Thanks for sharing these facts as before reading your post i was completely unaware of these facts