5 Myths about Search Engine Optimation (SEO)

5 Myths about Search Engine Optimation (SEO) are :

1. The search results are dependent on your page rank. It is thought that the ranking of a page in a list is a direct function of the page rank. Many people think that the higher the page rank, the higher your page will appear in the listing. This holds completely untrue. This also has generated many complaints by the people who saw a site with a lower page rank above them. Actually page rank remains a dominant factor, but it is not everything.
2. The engine tool bar shows your actual page rank. This myth became widespread in no time and generated a lot of excitement. The truth of the matter is that it only shows an approximate ranking.
3. The value of page rank is a function of incoming links on your page. The page rank does depend on the number of links but it does not depend only on the number of the links. It also depends upon the value associated to each of your link. It checks the content and display of each of the link and then the page rank is calculated.
4. Being listed in other directories gives you a bonus on the page rank. Some search engines work on collaboration with each other. For example yahoo and Google have a good working relationship. But the separate directories they maintain are for their own use. They do not use each others directories to calculate page ranks of their sites.
5. Meta tags are used to rank the site. Long gone are the days when Meta tags were used for site rating. Now the algorithms are advanced and so efficient. Now many sites do not have to use it even for the purpose of search.

So now that you can separate the reality from the myth, use it for your benefit. Employ good SEO techniques and improve your site
Thanks to Thomas Bjorn for this article. more...

Popular Link Building Methods

Link building is one of the few indespensable techniques used for SEO. Several Rumors have it that the more link a website has (inbound lines to be precise), the better it would do with search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN. This is the reason why link building techniques became wide and varied. Popular techniques used for link building involves reciprocal linking which is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. This technique usually involves three-way and two-way linking. This technique, however, have been widely replaced by the use of one-way linking.

One-Way Linking

One-way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. According to SEO Philippines consultants, it is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes "one-way" in direction. It is suspected by many SEO Philippines consultants that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. One-way links are also called Incoming Links or Inbound Links.

One technique used by consultants to achieve one way linking is by distributing articles through content sites and article directories. These articles generally contain an About The Author box that contains a one-way link back to the author's URL. Other article directories allows link coming in from the article body itself. When publishers use these articles, those one-way links help authors increase their page rank.

Other popular link building techniques

Because of the huge demand as well as competition, different techniques have now been used for link building purposes. Current trends of link building includes the use of:

Link Campaign

Link campaigns are a form of online marketing and SEO. A business seeking to increase the number of visitors to its web site can ask its strategic partners, professional organizations, chambers of commerce, suppliers, and customers to add links from their web sites. A link campaign may involve mutual links back and forth between related sites, but it doesn't have to require the reciprocation of links.

Link Popularity

Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. According to SEO Philippines consultants, link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.

Link Bait

Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention." Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.

Article by Margarette Mcbride, for more tips please visit http://www.myoptimind.com more...