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Ten Website Optimization Myths - Debunked!

What NOT To Believe in Website Optimization

By Wendy Boswell, About.com

This is the second half of Ten Website Optimization Myths - Debunked!. Read the first five myths of website optimization.

6. My site is too big. I’ll never be able to do this all by myself.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your site. The best strategy is to take one page at a time. Each page is a possible doorway into your site: that means that every single page can be your calling card to a possible customer or user. Focus on your most popular pages first to see what they need, and then keep the website optimization core concepts in mind as you create new pages. Read this article by website optimization guru Jill Whalen, Top Ten Tips to the Top of the Search Engines, and I promise you'll come away feeling more confident about the tasks facing you with your site.

7. Meta tags are the most important part of website optimization.

Meta tags, such as keyword, title, and description tags, are informational HTML tags in the head section of website pages that search engine spiders use as part of their indexing strategy. Meta tags are by NO means the most important part part of optimizing your site, but they are a part of a successful website optimization strategy. Read Including Keywords In Your Site Content and Source Code, or Using Title Tags To Improve Website Optimization.

8. I need doorway pages, keyword stuffing, and more tricky stuff in order to get high rankings.

Doorways, cloaked pages, keyword stuffing - these are all part of what is known as "black hat SEO" and definitely should NOT be part of a good website optimization strategy. For more information, read What Is Black Hat SEO?, Doorway Pages-Good SEO or Unethical Shortcuts?, and Search Engine Spam.

9. I can get to the Top Ten on any search engine in a very short period of time.

Website optimization is all about patience and lots of hard work...sounds fun, huh? In all reality, getting your site to the "Top Ten" of any search engine should not be the end goal; while obtaining that high ranking is a nice side benefit, your true target is providing a service to your visitors with your Web site.

The old adage "if you build it, they will come" applies especially in the realm of optimizing your site, because once you create a viable Web site that gives searchers what they are looking for, more traffic naturally will follow. Read Target Marketing-Does Your Internet Marketing Strategy Match Your Intended Audience? or How To Write Good Content to better understand how this all fits together; use Website Optimization Tools to better apprise how your site measures up, or if you're really rank-happy and need to see how you're doing in the search engines,check search rankings in Google, Yahoo and MSN Search.

10. I don’t need website optimization. I’m already doing well in the search engines.

That’s great! However, you probably don’t want to ride off into the sunset just yet. Good website optimization is an ongoing, never-ending process. There’s always something that could be tweaked, optimized, or revamped. Learn the basics of website optimization and find out how you can apply them to your site to make it even more successful: read Ten Steps to a Well-Optimized Site, Ten Tips For Search Engine Friendly Site Design to get a handle on what you could be working on even more; or, get SEO advice, information, and knowledge from some of the best search engine optimization blogs and forums out there with my Top 10 Website Optimization Forums and Top 10 Website Optimization Blogs.

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