4 Facts About SEO That Many Think Are Fiction

The world of SEO experts is a world full of people who disagree about all sorts of things. There are a few key search engine optimization areas that have been recently declared as dead by a few SEO blogs. It was because of these statements that it is time to separate FACT from FICTION in search engine optimization work.

Fact #1 – Link Building Is NOT Dead

There are numerous videos and blog posts declaring that the process of link building is a dead SEO art.  While it is true that the old method of spam/submitting your website URLs to thousands of link farms in the attempt to increase your incoming links is not only a dead method but it is a method that is frowned upon by the SEO gods. What is NOT dead is the importance of links and the process of building those links.  Incoming links to your WordPress website are vital to the health and authority granted to your site.  The proper way to build links for your SEO rankings on your site is to write unique, engaging, and quality content, which in turn, will generate links back to your WordPress site. The current and encouraged method of link building is now a process of creation of useful pieces of content and the encouragement of other link-minded content generators to link to your site.

Fact #2 – On Page SEO Is Important

There is no getting away from the importance of site-wide SEO settings as well as off-site SEO (link building, social media, etc.) being essential for your search engine optimization strategy.  But it is also essential that as WordPress site owners, we take on-page SEO seriously to maximize the potential of our search engine traffic. WordPress is a great assistant to enable the best possible on-page SEO to take place and target these multiple areas:

• Creating optimized URLs – With WordPress, users are able to set up their Permalinks to be more friendly and user readable yet have the ability to modify individual pages/posts to have different URL structures.
• The use of Title, Heading, and Image Alt Tags are a requirement for any good on-page SEO work.  WordPress’ editor makes it a breeze to handle these elements (especially with how easy it is to insert image alt tags).
• Don’t forget about your content.  WordPress goes out of its way to make content creation easier with a simple publishing process.  All the SEO work in the world will do nothing if you don’t have quality content that revolves around the targeted keyword that is the prize for that piece of content.

Fact #3 – SEO Requires Ongoing Work

There is a faulty understanding among many freelancers/developers that when they develop a website for a client or themselves they will be able to “set in motion” the SEO strategy for the website and let it run itself.  The idea that a site owner can simply set their SEO work on autopilot and “go fishing” for their targeted keywords/rankings misses the key point about what search engine optimization is all about. SEO is about constantly optimizing your content and presentation of your content to make it easier and more fluid for visitors to find the content that they might need. It might be good for site owners to ask themselves the question “How does my content answer a question someone might ask?” If you can figure out what type of question a visitor might be asking that would lead them to your content, then you know how to target your search engine optimization.  And if you understand that illustration, you will realize that SEO is an ongoing process and really is an ongoing relationship between you, the content creator, and search engines, the facilitator of getting your content in front of potential visitors.

Fact #4 – Search Engines WANT Site Owners to Be Involved in SEO

The idea that search engines just go off and do their own thing and site owners simply need to create content and hope that Google/Yahoo/Bing/whatever finds your content is just silly.  Most leading search engines offer websites and tools that assist site owners is optimizing the data that is fed to search engines. If a site owner chooses not to use a tool like Google Webmaster Tools they are losing out on the ability to understand what type of queries are bringing visitors to their sites, what queries are not performing as well, where there would be on-site optimization to increase rankings, and many more helpful hints to improve the conversation between the site and the search engine.  If search engine companies take the time and effort to build tools for site owners to better interact and optimize, you can bet that the search engines WANT site owners to be involved in the SEO conversation.

Final Thoughts

Have you run across any SEO statements that are off the mark or no longer valid?  We’d love to hear what you’ve come across so that by keeping the discussion going we can help everyone focus on the right things (CONTENT is KING!) when it comes to search engine optimization.