Because of how Google changes the rules to the game ever so often and the elusive nature of getting to the top of search engine results page, an SEO myth is born almost every day. These myths misinform individuals who genuinely want to master SEO and, worst, they are impossibly difficult to extinguish because a number of “experts” keep on harping about these so-called tried and tested tips. It becomes extremely disappointing for an average, reasonable person who just wants his small business or local business website to rank decently in search engines. So without much ado, here are the myths that must be put to rest.
1. Using Google Analytics means that Google can openly spy on you and use whatever information they retrieve against you.
This myth is straight from individuals who love conspiracy theories. Especially with how reliant a number of individuals are on Google, it is quite impossible for this search giant to compromise its relationship with millions of its users by spying on them. Also, Google has made numerous assurances that it does not collect information from its users.
2. The PageRank score is correlated to your Google ranking.
This is not always the case. There are low PR websites that easily outrank the high PR websites. The mechanism that PageRank uses to assess websites is completely different from those used by Google internally for their ranking algorithm.
3. Using an XML Sitemap will boost your ranking.
The reason for why sitemaps file exist is for the discovery of any duplicate content. But aside from that, including this into your sitemaps.xml won’t do any more good that what has just been stated even if you assigned high priority to this file. For this reason, individuals do not have to be paranoid about this.
4. Personalization has destroyed the idea of being ranked first.
Although there is some truth to the personalization of results based on the user’s search history which takes place even if you do not log in on Google, the differences between personalized and non-personalized results are very minimal. In order for you to know this for yourself, you can always re-run your queries by adding &pws=0 to your searches and you’ll know for sure how little things are shifted.
4. SEO is a one-time activity.
You’re never really done optimizing your website. SEO is ongoing and is never finished because trends change all of the time.
Chris Marentis is an experienced marketer who likes to write aboute Surefire Social and local marketing experts