There is a lot of  misinformation om ways of getting visitor traffic to your website. Many people are searching for the magic pill to achieve their traffic goals. Remember, SEO is a never ending practice with many facets and methods.

Myth #1: SEO is a collection of tricks designed to fool search engines. SEO done correctly brings targeted traffic to your website that is searching for what you offer. The object is not to fool the search engines, it is to communicate exactly what your web page and your site is about.

Myth #2: SEO just means putting keywords in the META tags. Almost every website owner has heard of META tags. They used an important part of SEO, but no longer. Of all the META tags, only the Title tag is given any importance by Google. The focus today is on selecting the correct keyword phrases and using these in the visible text on the web page and in the inbound links from other websites.

Myth #3: Do SEO once and you will get great results forever? In the “old days” of SEO, circa 2000, you used to be able to optimize a website and leave it alone. Even though the basics remain the same of using the keywords in the visible text, search engines are constantly changing and evolving what it takes to be in a top search position.

Myth #4: SEO requires 400-600 words of text on a web page. Although search engines use the text on the page to determine what a page is about, there is no magic number of how much text is required to be optimized. A web page needs enough text to communicate your marketing message, whether it is 250 words or 600 words.

Myth #5: Flash on your website hurts your search rankings. It is the absence of text that will hurt your rankings. Having Flash within your website does not hurt. Think of Flash much like any other graphic image; there is no text in Flash for the search engines to read.

Myth #6: Multiple copies of your website help rankings. Search engines reward original writings and discount duplicate content. Making multiple copies of your website will not help your rankings.

Myth #7: Blogs get preferential rankings on search engines. Including a blog in your website won’t magically give you a top ranking on Google. Blogs are a powerful SEO tool because they regularly add keyword rich content to your website, broadcast your message via RSS and attract links.

Myth #8: You need to optimize for the long tail. No, you optimize for the more competitive keyword phrases. This includes plenty of keyword rich content and attracting links from other websites. Long tail phrases will “optimize naturally” and your website will be found for many of these low-volume long-tail phrases as a byproduct of optimization.

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