Top 20 misconceptions about SEO - part 2
This article looks at ten areas of myth, mystery and misunderstanding regarding search engine optimization from the perspective of someone who specialises in freelance copywriting for websites. The other ten points I covered in part one.
As before, these are in no particular order.
'The main thing is that our company name should be ranked number one.'
That's all well and good when you're a well-known operator, but what about people who have never heard of you? For most small businesses, it's flattering to the ego to know you're at the top, but you'd be better off concentrating on optimising search terms to do with your business, not your name.
'We're market leaders in our field, so we're bound to be at the top of the rankings.'
Don't bet on it. One of the beauties of the Internet is that it enables small businesses to compete with the big boys. If your competitors put more into their sites than you do, you could be losing your crown.
'We're only going to promote our homepage.'
Your homepage is very important, but you're missing out if you're essentially ignoring the rest of your site. Good SEO is about thinking about all your pages. And when it comes to keywords, it's best to think of pushing no more than one or two terms per page. If you're only promoting your homepage, that leaves you with a lot of unoptimized keywords.
'We've made sure the most popular search terms are in the content.'
Choosing keywords is an art in itself. If you're in a line of business with more than a modicum of competition, simply going for the most popular keywords is unlikely to get you on the first page of the search engine results. And very often, if you're not on the first page, you might as well be on the last - as no-one will click on your listing.
'The coding is all there, so we're fine.'
What this generally means is that someone has written the tags. Tags should be done, but now count for much less with the search engines than they used to.
'We don't need to bother with the tags.'
They may not be that important with the search engines, but they're still worth doing properly. Particularly the title tags, as there is evidence that the search engines do still pay some attention to them. Title tags are also important from a visitor's perspective.
'All our marketing should go into SEO.'
Important as websites are (and for many companies, a website is the only presence they have) they are still only a means to an end. Your human visitors come first - SEO is simply a way of reaching them, not of persuading them to buy or keeping them loyal. And as any old marketing pro will tell you, it's generally easier and costs less to keep an existing customer than find a new one. So don't neglect other marketing avenues.
'We must submit our site to Google.'
Actually, no you don't have to. As long as you have a link to any other site which is listed, Google will find you. It's not a bad idea to submit your site to Google if you want to, and it might speed up the process a little. However, it's not really necessary.
'We must submit our site to hundreds of search engines.'
This is what some SEO companies would have you believe. But nearly all search engines will find you anyway. And with, at the time of writing, Google having over 90% of the UK market, and with Yahoo and MSN/Bing collaring most of the remainder, it's essentially a waste of time.
'Who needs search engines? We get plenty of leads from traditional media.'
Good for you, but have you any idea how much you're missing out on? Time after time I get asked to quote for rewriting a website and I ask the client about optimization only to find out it's something they've never really thought of. In almost every area of business, there are numerous searches from potential customers which you'll miss out on if they never find your website.
Thanks for reading- if you haven't already, don't forget to take a look at Part 1.
© Peter Wise
Peter Wise is a freelance copywriter based in London, UK offering a complete range of freelance copywriting services . This includes website and SEO copywriting, ads, direct mail, brochures, newsletter articles and press releases. If you're looking for a freelance copywriter, please call 44 (0) 7767 687524 or visit www.ideaswise.com
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