The year 2012 marked many changes in the SEO Industry. Many are scared about the Google Algorithm Updates which happened many times over this year in form of Panda and Penguin. And hence there are many myths around this subjects and I know many SEO professionals burning their brains on what is working and what is not. Guys, you don’t have to panic. There is not much to worry if you have gone the Google way. Below you can see some SEO myths after the Google Panda and Google Penguin Update.
1. Too many Links from One Domain
If you have a site linking to you from their blog roll or side bar, you may get back links from all the pages and most SEOs around here are worried whether its gona harm your SEO effort. The answer here is, NO – its not gona harm you unless it is from a manipulative source. If you have this kind of link, its not the end of the world. If they are really good editorial links, its gona help you. But say you have 1000 links from one domain, it does not mean that you get 1000 times the value from that domain for the anchor text you are linked with, but, it helps you and not harm you. No panic please. If you buy some links in a manipulative way, don’t get scared, send them an email and ask them to remove.
2. Somebody is building Spammy Links to my Site
You can see negative SEO all around highly competitive niches. There are people building spammy links to competitor domains. If you notice this, no need to panic. Don’t spend too much of time contacting webmasters one by one and negotiating them on taking the links off. Instead, work on building quality editorial links, like from good user experience sites in form of quality write ups. Establish a strong brand presence that way and get rid of this spam link equity. Stop worrying and start focusing on more quality editorial links.
3. My Keyword Density if too high and I will be Kissed by a Panda or Penguin
You don’t need to worry about the keyword density. There is no fixed percentage by rule that you need to maintain. Just imagine this – You have the content written for a very normal human visitor and its as simple as that. You may use the keyword in the title, in the product name, product description – No problem.. You can, but do it in a human way. Make sure your site have a good user experience with that. Do things naturally and no need to panic.
4. Other sites are scraping my site and republishing
I think you should be proud about this. Since they find your site content so interesting they says its worth copying the content. Google is not gona hold that against you. My blog is copied by many aggrigators, and I am not worried. Some users and spam, some are legitimate. The smart way of doing it is to have links to your site from inside the content, so these scraped content will also point to your website. You need not have to be panic about this.
5. Now Google See my Analytics and if my “bounce rate” is higher – will I be penalized.
Using a tool like Google Analytics or Google Webmaster tools may not hinder your search ranking if your website has got a huge bounce rate. No – They don’t
Google says – Google Web Spam need and Google Search Quality team does not get data directly from Google Analytics. They might see people are coming back to the search queries after visiting the site. But, if your website have a good user experience, and that answers users question, why do you need to panic. You are playing safe.
6. I used Reciprocal Linking and will this spam me?
Reciprocal linking is – I link to Site A and Site A links back to me. This was a very old school strategy which webmasters still use. Using that will not penalize your website. Stop worrying.. Don’t take it on that perspective. If you share the website that shared your content, that is legitimate..
7. I am using non ideal anchor text links. Will that hurt my relevancy?
There is a myth in the SEO space that using Exact Match Anchor text cause a problem with your ranking. Google don’t even consider your website ranking for that keyword. Well, that’s a no. You can link with an exact match anchor text, provided that adds value to your content. Anchor texts are created with the intention that if a user coming to your website want to know more about what that text means, he can follow that link to know more. And if you do that the right way to give the best user experience, you don’t need to get panic. Its all about creating great user experience.
8. My website have many footer links. Will this affect me?
You don’t need to worry about footer links as long as the links points the user to the right page. Check out websites like zappos.com. They have a huge footer link space, but for a user it create a great experience and it makes them like the company. What you need to keep avoiding is creating variation anchor text links from footer. That does not make much sense to the user. Do it the user way, and Google loves you.
9. You should not have dynamic URLs or URLs with Page ID’s or Numbers
Well, most of the SEO companies you work with forces your to rewrite the URL to a friendly structure. Those are the industries best practices. If you have the keyword on the URL instead of a page ID or number, it will be easy for the user to understand what is on the page, without even going to it. Or say, if you send an email, or tweet, it will be easy for them to remember and share. Apart from that, there is no huge benefits by changing the URL structure. I am not saying it won’t work, it worked for me and it depends on how much of changes you do.. Having URLs keyword filled is not the rule of the thumb and its just a good practice. You don’t need to be panic about this.
10. Link Baiting and Content Marketing, Will it work
After seeing many article directories are removed from the index, it does not mean, link baiting or content marketing does not work. I am still focusing on these areas. Google and Bing haven’t said that you can’t to content marketing or link baiting. You can do it and that’s the best way to create and share good content on the web. To get more value, you would rather create content that works well with your user and engages them.
Google’s latest algorithmic changes are just to enhance the Search User experience. They want to deliver the best results. If your website is having a great user experience, No Panic, you are gona eat the fruit of your good job.
