SEO Myths Busted III
- 1. Theo van der Zee (@theovdzee) CEO & Co-founder, FinishJoomla (@finishjoomla) Joomla!Day Greece, May 2011 SEO Myths Busted
- 2. Theo van der Zee
- 4. PageRank Myths Linking out Up-to-date Meta keywords Suffix Reciprocal links
- 8. “ PageRank is a highly important metric” Myth I:
- 9. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PageRank-hi-res.png Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 10. Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 11. Correlation PageRank to Position 0 0.5 1 No correlation Perfect correlation PageRank 0.18 Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-science-of-ranking-correlations Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 12. Google Toolbar PageRank Updates Source: http://www.thenewsinn.com/next-google-page-rank-update-2011-history.html January 2011 April 2010 December 2009 October 2009 May 2009 April 2009 December 2008 September 2008 July 2008 April 2008 January 2008 October 2007 Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 13. An imprecise metric 4 5 PR 4 PR 4 Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 14. “ Our PageRank has dropped in the last PageRank update!Now what?” “ I don’t know, sue Google in court?” Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 15. Better metrics than PageRank Number of customers Conversion rate Daily revenue per item Inlinking root domains Keywords sending visitors Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 16. PageRank is not important “ […] many site owners seem to think [PageRank] is the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.” -- Google Employee Susan Moskwa Source: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6a1d6250e26e9e48 Myth I: “PageRank is a highly important metric”
- 17. “ PageRank is a highly important metric” Myth I: Busted?
- 18. “ Linking out to other websites is bad” Myth II:
- 19. What does Google say? “ In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites”. -- Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ Myth II: “Linking out to other websites is bad”
- 20. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1_rio_de_janeiro_slum_2010.JPG Myth II: “Linking out to other websites is bad”
- 21. Source: http://seogadget.co.uk/google-page-penalty-for-comment-spam-rankings-and-traffic-drop/ Spammy comments Myth II: “Linking out to other websites is bad”
- 22. Rel=“nofollow” <a rel=“nofollow” href=“http://www.joomla.org”>No link value passed</a> Myth II: “Linking out to other websites is bad”
- 23. “ Linking out to other websites is bad” Myth II: Busted?
- 24. “ Trading links will increase rankings” Myth III:
- 25. Source: http://www.blog.organicapex.com/reciprocal-link/ Reciprocal links Myth III: “Trading links will increase rankings”
- 26. 3-way reciprocal link A B C Myth III: “Trading links will increase rankings”
- 27. Important aspects of a link <a href=“http://www.joomla.org”> This is the anchor text </a> Myth III: “Trading links will increase rankings”
- 28. Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links Links in content > Links outside content Myth III: “Trading links will increase rankings”
- 29. “ Trading links will increase rankings” Myth III: Busted?
- 30. “ Using a suffix will make your pages rank better” Myth IV:
- 31. .html http://www.example.org/index .html .php .exe .cgi .asp Myth IV: “Using a suffix will make your pages rank better”
- 32. What the big boys are doing http://www.zappos.com/teva-mush-ii-island-navy http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Peter-Gray/dp/1429219475/ http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/security/ http://www.seomoz.org/blog/evangelizing-a-datadriven-culture Myth IV: “Using a suffix will make your pages rank better”
- 33. “ Using a suffix will make your pages rank better” Myth IV: Busted?
- 34. “ A regularly updated webpage ranks higher” Myth V:
- 35. The long tail Source: http://www.elliance.com/aha/infographics/long-tail-seo.aspx Myth V: “A regularly updated webpage ranks higher”
- 36. What about you? Myth V: “A regularly updated webpage ranks higher”
- 37. “ A regularly updated webpage ranks higher” Myth V: Busted?
- 38. “ Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings” Myth VI:
- 39. There he is again... “ [...] Google does not use the keywords meta tag in our web search” -- Head of Google’s Webspam team Matt Cutts Source: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/ “ I hope this clarifies that the keywords meta tag is not something that you need to worry about, or at least not in Google.” Myth VI: “Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings”
- 40. Entering the keywords Joomla! Administrator -> Global Configuration -> Site Myth VI: “Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings”
- 41. Meta description as shown in Google Meta title Meta description Myth VI: “Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings”
- 42. Extract meta keywords from page source Myth VI: “Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings”
- 43. “ Meta keywords tag boosts your rankings” Myth VI: Busted?
- 44. What did we learn? Stop obsessing over PageRank Link out to quality websites, don't link to bad neighborhoods Use rel="nofollow" to stop the link juice Handle reciprocal links with care Don't use a suffix in your URL Add new quality content on a regular basis Stop entering meta keywords, start using them as a research tool
- 45. Questions?
- 46. @theovdzee Theo van der Zee [email_address] @finishjoomla