I read an article on a dutch website, Website 24/7. It discussed five myths about SEO. I decided to translate those myths, so more people can use it when optimizing there websites. Keep in mind there are a lot of articles found about SEO and they probably have some kind of truth in it. However, the myths below are true for me and therefor I would advice you to keep these in mind when doing your SEO or looking for a company that offers it.

Myth 1: You only have to optimize your site once

That’s just plain wrong. Like any other kind of promotion the process continues from time to time. Just after you finished your SEO you’ll see a positive effect, but when you stop optimizing it will fade, because of competitors that are optimizing there websites too.

When you are optimizing your website you’ll get better positions in the search results at first. If, after that, nothing happens anymore and you don’t update your website, Google will loose interest. Competitors who are updating there sites will get the advantage then.

Myth 2: directory site links are helpful to get a top position

Well they aren’t! A lot of company’s offer to put your link in like 1000 directory’s. With those 1000 links you would conquer a top position in Google. Unfortunately these sort of links don’t help at all. Most of these directory’s are irrelevant for Google and others aren’t around long enough. And you don’t want to have your site related to those irrelevant websites.

Myth 3: Your keywords should feature a lot on your website

Website 24/7 has a nice example about this. Well it’s sort of logical that Google doubts about your site when it’s about lawnmowers and the word lawnmower isn’t around on the website at all. But it isn’t necessary to repeat your keywords every third rule of text. This doesn’t have a lot of effect and it makes the text harder to read which will cause visitors to leave your website.

Keep in mind that a lot of SEO company’s are still doing this. It used to be very effective but not anymore!

Myth 4: meta tags

It’s possible to add meta tags on every page you have. These tags give Google an idea what the page is about, it used to at least. The problem with meta tags is, that a search engine needs to trust you about the content of these tags.  Unfortunately people have abused meta tags a lot to get a better result so most search engine don’t use meta tags anymore.

Myth 5: Pagerank shows you how your website will score

Pagerank is an estimation Google gives at websites, but it doesn’t show the order you’ll appear in the results. It’s just an indication. Your true results are only known to Google . Hence, it could well be that pages with a  higher pagerank are lower in the results than pages with a lower pagerank. In addition, a Google pagerank is for a page, not a whole website!

Did you know that it’s possible to follow your Facebook and LinkedIn friends on Twitter? They announced it on their blog back in june.

Today, we’re improving our Find Friends section to make it easier to find and follow the people you already know — your friends on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn — who use Twitter. Our Facebook app, which launched in 2007, now shows which of your Facebook friends are on Twitter and lets you follow them instantly and save them to a list. The app also lets you post your Tweets to your Facebook profile and now, to one of your Facebook pages too. With the Tweets application by LinkedIn, you can see which of your LinkedIn connections are on Twitter and follow the ones you choose right from the app. The app also lets you save your LinkedIn connections as a list, post your Tweets to LinkedIn, and add your Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile.

When browsing the web today I found an interesting article about VSEO, video search engine optimization. That means that it’s possible to generate some extra traffic through YouTube! You can find the article here. It explains in short what to do, to get that extra traffic. In short:

Video search engine optimization begins with writing effective title, description and tags (Keywords). One should remember that the Title of the video has to be attractive and include the keywords. Again description should be attractive and should include proper keywords relevant to your industry. It is a good idea to add URL of your website/blog on your video in watermark. Finally add effective tags (keywords) of your video.

Yet another thing you can take in consideration when doing your SEO business.

During my weekly SEO activity’s I found searchengineland.com again. It’s been a while since I’d been there and thought it would be wise to look into search term researching on that specific website. Turns out they have a list with easy to use, mostly free tools for search term researching! With these tools it’s easier to get you keywords right. Below the list of tools you’ll find every article searchengineland has related to the topic!

You can find the list & articles @ http://searchengineland.com/library/search-marketing/search-marketing-search-term-research

These days everybody wants to be on some kind of social media. Big company’s are jumping into it like flies on a sugar cake. And if the company itself isn’t actively participating in social media, the company’s customers and fans will. I wondered how bigger company’s use social media in their marketing and went searching. I found some really useful links that will help you to implement similar things in your own social media marketing activities.

• 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips
  This blog asks 25 company’s, and there in-house social media marketers, what there success story’s are when looking at social media in their businesses.
• How To Promote Your Business On Social Media
  Just like the title states, how can you promote your business on social media. It provides explanations about it.
• 8 Social Media Marketing Tips for Companies
  Same as above. The blog explains what 8 things you can do to start with when beginning your social media journey.

A good video about which website structure is better for SEO purposes. Conclusion: A flat structure. It minimizes the amount of clicks a user has to do. This gives you a better chance on the indexation of your pages.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Flat Site Architecture from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.