No need to submit your site. All you need is a link from a URL on another site that is already indexed by the engine. The search engines have been 'discovering' sites for years without submissions. Only needed if 1) you're trying to get your site indexed but have no inbound links from URLs already indexed at Google or 2) you have a HUGE site with 100s of thousands or millions of URLs. Even a large site does not 'have' to have one if they have a very good information architecture where the engines can figure out which pages are most important and should be indexed first. But it's highly recommended in such cases where there are large numbers of URLs. You do not need to update existing pages on your site frequently. The frequency of change in a page located at a particular URL has no bearing in how it ranks. In fact, doing so can do more harm than good in the case where your page already ranks well. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" If you have a page that ranks in the top 3 positions I would HIGHLY recommend that you leave that page alone indefinitely and focus only on building inbound links to it from other sites to get it the rest of the way to #1. I have URLs that have been ranking on page 1 for years and have not been touched since they were created. Of course, if your page has crappy content or the on-page optimization is less than desireable, by all means make a change. But if you're ranking well, I would suggest you leave your on-page SEO alone. You DO need to add content to your site frequently, and by that I mean NEW PAGES. The reason you want to do this has nothing to do with how your existing URLs rank. It has to do mainly with increasing the frequency at which the search engines crawl your site. If they start out crawling your site once per month and notice that when they come back the next time that you have lots of new pages they have not seen before, they will typically increase your crawl rate. They'll continue to do this until they think that they've reached a balance between their crawl rate and your rate of content (new page) generation. The only thing update frequency has to do with rankings is that by adding new pages, you get new URLs that can target new keyword phrases. I agree that this is a myth... at Google... But this is NOT a myth at Yahoo! I have personally witnessed this at Yahoo! in the last 2 months. After ranking #1 for numerous HIGHLY competitive terms (250,000,000+ results) at Yahoo! for almost a decade, we let our Search Submit Program (SSP) contract expire on March 3rd of this year. The very next day our rankings began dropping drastically... We now do good to rank in the top 20-30 for those phrases. The 3rd page of this recent article on SEOchat.com about how to rank at Yahoo! confirms that I was not imagining the correlation between the two. Participating in Yahoo! SSP absolutely DOES improve your organic rankings. This is not a myth IMO... just stated slightly wrong. I would say that "At a minimum your site will likely be penalized if you get caught violating Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If the offense is severe enough your site 'could' be banned." is a more accurate depiction. Again, I don't think the 'myth' was stated correctly. If you get caught selling links you WILL almost surely be penalized if not banned (depending on the extent to which you are selling links and how important your site is to Google's index - i.e. they are NOT going to ban BMW.com but they will ban a mom and pop site). But it is hard to prove someone 'bought' a link, so the buyer is rarely penalized directly. If that were the case then a competitor could put you out of business by buying links, pointing them to your URL, and then reporting you to Google. The buyer is typically penalized indirectly because they keep paying for the link, but Google has devalued the link so that the link does not help your URL rank at all. However, if Google can prove you paid for them (like if you were bragging on Google's Webmaster Help Forums about buying links while you were logged in with your Google Webmaster Tools account and they find the links) then Google WILL penalize the buyer as well. I agree... I can make a page about ducks rank for auto loans if I have enough inbound links with the link text "auto loans" (and slight variations)... However, it is HIGHLY recommended that you take advantage of the <title>, <h1>, and <h2> elements on every page as they are the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most important on-page SEO factor in Google's algorithm (and the algorithms of most engines). IMO it's just plain stupid NOT to take advantage of every on-page ranking factor you can since these are the factors that YOU can control directly. You can't always control what link text other sites use to link to you if the links are natural (not farmed yourself). But you CAN control the on-page factors, so not doing so is leaving money, traffic, conversions on the table. Words in your <meta content="keywords"> element is ignored by Google (except for looking for keyword stuffing violations). The entire <meta content="keywords"> HTML element has been rendered worthless by spammers except for in a few unsophisticated engines that still use them... Even there, they typically carry very little weight. Again... You can make a page with little or no SEO copy rank for words that don't even appear anywhere on the page with enough backlinks, so I've never given this much creedence. You don't HAVE to optimize for long tail IF you only care about short tail. But it is a fact that long tail is easier to optimize for simply because there is less competion. But that does not mean that it will bring you more traffic. It does not good to rank #1 for a long tail phrase if no one ever searches for it or that phrase never converts. My sites optimize for both head terms and long tail phrases. My home page is ALWAYS optimized for my head terms... my most hard to rank for, most competitive terms (typically 1 word, possibly 2 word phrases). Then the deeper you drill into my site, the targeted keyword phrases become more and more long tail. IMO anyone that targets one or the other (and not both) are generally missing out on a LOT of opportunities... If you use a theme pyramids based information architecture (see Brett Tabke's post 4th down in this thread) for structuring your site, these pages will help each other rank better because it creates a situation where every page's parent and children are related, relevant pages... the parent page is about the same topic, just more general... the children pages are about the same topic, just more specific.
While most of these are just a myth some are quite reasonable. Sitemaps for very big sites could help quite a bit for example. Updating the content from time to time is a good practice too. Your site could be penalized for buying/selling links if someone report you to Google. It happens all the time. Targeting long tail keywords is your only hope in some very saturated niches. Etc.
what I know : 3. yes, for a blog. no if your site is not a blog or free cms like. 8. absolutely 9. the more competitor, the more words needed.
OUCH! Dude - I really feel for you. When I read this - it's like...all that work down the drain. I hope you get things going again. I agree - you do need a sitemap unless you have a small site. One of my sites is very small - about 10 pages (but effective)...I don't need to upload a sitemap, but out of habbit, I have one anyway.
I agree with your mate. Even not submitting to SEs your site will be found since SEs are crawling the entire web often. Update your contents once in while will help also because google love fresh contents.
How PPC help or hurt? I am running the ppc of 3 websites. I found neither help nor it hurts ranking. I think this one is not true.
hmmm..i think some of your tips will definitely work.. can you check this website and tell me the feed-back for improving.. cheapsubmit.info
I am not fully agree with "Top Ten Organic SEO Myths" specially with "Myth 9" Quality content is better than quantity content.
hmm. Some are correct, some are not. Myth 1: correct: NEVER submit. Myth 2: false: google recommends it, so do it. Myth 3: false: its not an essential factor, but it does help with SEO Myth 4: false: I've found these can help rankings Myth 5: correct: you won't get banned for not putting a sitemap up, but you can for things like hidden content Myth 6: correct: you might get penalised, but you won't get banned Myth 7: they're not essential, but they certainly help Myth 8: false. it won't matter to Google, but it will to Yahoo, MSN etc. Myth 9: correct Myth 10: false: long tail keywords are great for new sites
To submit your url to search engines is useless and a waste of time and PPC will help or hurt rankings, I can say it depends on how your use it.
If your site is new and you immediately put PPC ads or affiliate ads....Google will see it as a SPAM/get rich site and you will never show in the SERPs...trust me. If your site is new...your best be is to add content and grow the site for a few moths then add ads.
Again trosquin, you show that you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. You can get great rankings even with a new site with ads.
I am sorry to say but I think this is a case of a preacher leading the poor sheep astray. Because you declare these as if it is factual, but in reality these are only your opinions. I agree with some of them, but not all of them. #7 H1 tag is proven to help in SEO #8 this one is funny, because I have heard of ranking for keywords without a meta-tag for your keywords...but leaving them off your main page is insane, unless your page is mostly images, multimedia, ect. But even then you can use alt tags. Of coarse, if you have a non-competitive keyword you can rank for it easily. #9 If your site is about something, then you have something to write about or share, or why are you doing it in the first place. Everybody knows good solid content rules and anything less than 250 words means you either don't care to put in the time, or you did not have anything to say in the first place. Either way the SE's love content, so I do not understand where you are getting at on this one. I just think that you should not declare truths to the world when it is just a opinion. It's like saying the Theory of Evolution is fact, when it is only a theory. Did man really walk on the moon or was is shot on a Hollywood set? Was 9/11 planned by our own government or was it really a bunch of goat herders? What are the facts? Some of your myths are wrong.
True about Sitemap.xml, MetaTags, h1, etc. In our company we deal with that in a daily basis and is also important: Directory Submission, Article Submission, Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, Link Building, PPC Management, FaceBook Promotion, Blogs Promotion
Myth 1: You should submit your URLs to search engines- No, don't pay for serach engine submission service, don't submit, ever! You will actually rank better if you let the search engine find you. Don't buy those service that blast to search engine monthly. Myth 2: You need a Google Sitemap-For better indexing of larger sites, pending on the architecture of your site. But not required for small new sites. Myth 3: You need to update your site frequently--old contents, particularily those from good old days of internet (pre 1998) still rank well. Myth 4: PPC ads will help/hurt rankings--no effect on google ranking. Myth 5: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s guidelines--Google guidelines are vague and ever changing on whim, but it's best to follow them to rank better. Myth 6: Your site will be banned if you buy links--most link buyers don't get caught. And when they say buy links, they meant more like link exchanges or buying sitewide footer links. Myth 7: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings--utter garbage, used to be important, now, not so much. Myth 8: Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page--huh? Not really. Myth 9: SEO copy must be 250 words in length--really? never heard of it. Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail--no, you can naturally rank well for some long tail keywords if you brute force your way up some of the short tail competitive keywords. It's just it's so much easier to rank better fast with long tail. Also, long tail is important as it's best to vary your anchor texts.
Myth 1: You should submit your URLs to search engines. - I agree Myth 2: You need a Google Sitemap. - I not agree Myth 3: You need to update your site frequently - I agree Myth 4: PPC ads will help/hurt rankings. - I not agree Myth 5: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google’s guidelines. - I not agree Myth 6: Your site will be banned if you buy links. - I not agree Myth 7: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high rankings. - I agree Myth 8: Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page. - I not agree Myth 9: SEO copy must be 250 words in length. - I not agree Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail. - I not agree