SEO Myths & SEO Legends, the Truth Behind

In the past few weeks I have seen plenty of SEO myths being distributed here on HubPages, I tried to address each of them commenting on those hubs. But the thing is not simple and some of those myths won’t go away no matter how hard some of us try to tell the people not to listen to self proclaimed SEO gurus and SEO experts. Anyway, I wrote a considerate post on SEO myths on my Practical SEO blog and I wanted to share a bit with you here on HubPages. I won’t go to such lengths here, I will address only the main concerns, but if you want to know more you can read it on my blog, Practical SEO.

Let’s start with one of the biggest and most passed around SEO myth there is, Google ban. You heard people say that they were banned from Google or that they fear that they are going to be banned. I recently read a Hub stating that black hat SEO is bad, which it is, but the person who wrote that hub clearly stated that Google will ban websites implementing black hat SEO techniques. The truth is that Google can’t ban a site; I mean they probably can, but they don’t do that. Google will penalize your site, you will receive what is known as Google SLAP, it will not be deleted for all times from the SERP like some are suggesting, it will move back a lot or it will be removed from the index, you will wish you never tempered with black hat SEO, but that is it. The good thing is that Google will give you a second chance, if you correct all of the mistakes, remove the bad links etc. you will get a chance to go back to normal rankings, it will take some time and you will regret making those mistakes, but that is it, you can revert your mistake and hopefully learn from it.

The second most passed around SEO myth is grabbing a backlink from a high PR site will get you top rankings. Also on the HubPages I found a recently added Hub saying that 13 backlinks created on PR6 to PR9 site will boost your rankings considerably. While this may be true, the fact that the person is suggesting to create profiles on those sites with a link to your webpage and get those results is not true. The only way you will get a value link from such sites is if you get a link from their homepage or any other page with high PR. Getting a link from your profile is worth nothing, like a comment on a PR0 blog, because your profile page has a PR0. The only thing going your way with this is that you have a backlink from a site with authority, but again, considering that you are getting a link from a profile page doesn’t mean much to Google, they don’t appreciate profile links as much. Also, the sites need to be related, it doesn't matter much if it is a PR8 website, if the site is about car parts and your site is about weight loss the link won’t be as important as a backlink from a related site.

I know these two were long but I can’t stand seeing people getting misinformed and loving it. So I will address two more SEO myths that are pretty well known. You probably heard many SEO gurus suggesting to lower your outgoing links or to use no follow because your PR juice will flow out. We are not talking about a water tank here so it will run out of water, this is people one of the dumbest SEO myths alive. It’s true that too many outgoing links can do you harm, but we are talking about numbers close to 100, not 10 or 20 links. The last SEO myth I will present is the well known “fact” that high PR sites get guaranteed top rankings in the SERP. Well, I ask a question instead of providing an explanation. If that is true, how come that most niches are dominated by PR0 to PR3 websites? High page rank is a good thing and it is a sign of authority to some extent, it will help you get the ranking you want much easier, but it is far from being a guarantee.

A word to the wise, when you read an SEO book but before you start claiming to know everything there is to know (a book that was probably outdated two years at the time you read it) please check some of the SEO authority websites and blogs, I’m sure you can find plenty out useful and true information there. SEO changes, you need to follow updates, a thing that worked two years ago probably won’t work today. There are some things that stayed the same, but most changed. So be sure to follow through with those changes and be in touch with what is going on, if you don’t know where to look I already gave you a great list of useful SEO resources, so start there. If you want to know more SEO myths check out my blog.

Please, if you know of any other SEO Myth not covered here or on my blog, post it in the comment section. I am sure that there are more I forgot to mention or never even heard of. Looking forward to some laughs.