Now it’s time to bust some SEO myths! Matt Cutts has told the world that link-building is dead. Did you believe him? Well, he is an expert, but don’t fire your SEO guy just yet. Google may want to prevent you from link-building or finding ways to improve page ranking by tricking their algorithms but that doesn’t mean you have to make things easy for them. This brings us to the first of 3 major SEO myths.
Link Building is Dead
If you think a great site will magically attract traffic, then you’ve got a surprise in store for you. Google doesn’t pick up on the quality of writing or how nice the pictures or design looks, the algorithm isn’t that sophisticated. You need all these things, but they’re not enough on their own.
Cutts just said that Google had tried excluding links from the algorithm but the results were “much worse”. It’ll be a long while before they figure out a way to exclude links from the algorithm without compromising the quality of search results. That means links are here to stay for the time being but don’t bother buying loads of dodgy links because you will only be penalized.
Pursue a strategic acquisition of quality and reputable links instead. Your SEO and marketing guys should be thinking about promotions and publicity stunts that will naturally encourage sites to link to you. If any of the links turn bad, then get rid of them! Be ready for change at all times.
You can Build links on Social Media
You can but it won’t help you. Google crawlers don’t pick up on links from Twitter and Facebook. The three companies aren’t cooperating due to bad history. Not only do links on social media make no difference to your page ranking, but likes and re-tweets make no difference either. Google doesn’t see them. The only social network where shares and links make a difference is Google+. Due to slow pick-up, Google offered the incentive of improved SEO to businesses that are listed on their social network. Having said that, +1s don’t improve your page ranking for some reason, but it certainly still makes sense to create a Google+ page.
Google can spy on you through Analytics
You would be foolish not to make use of this great free tool yet many attempts to cope without it because they are paranoid that Google will use it to monitor their activities. This is a mistake. Google will look at the places you put analytics code to see which sites are yours and may penalize you if they don’t like what you are up to, that is true. This can be a pain if they discover your link network as it will negatively impact your SEO. You can get around this by setting up multiple Google accounts and using a different Analytics code for each site. Awkward I know, but it works and then you still have the use of this indispensable resource.
