My name is Zafar Ahmed, I am an SEO based in Pakistan

WHAT IS SEO?

The practice which involves the optimization of a website through the improvement of external and internal aspects with a view to maximizing the volume of traffic received by a website from various search engines is called search engine optimization. Firms practicing in seo tend to vary. Some firms prefer to take a generalized and broad approach.

Others tend to focus in a highly specialized manner. Therefore SEO may be defined as trying to make a site the best it could be for search engines like google, yahoo, msn and others as well as for those who will be visiting the site. Search engines first need to find, crawl and index, then determine the relevancy and display the results.
There are many prevalent myths surrounding SEO. And it is time to debunk those myths.

MYTHS ABOUT INDEXING, CRAWLING AND SUBMITTING

There is need for doorway pages.
It is completely outdated and an obsolete practice.

Multiple sites are required.
They don’t help the engines in any way but increase maintenance work and cost.

It is true that frequent spidering will improve rankings.
An Absolutely wrong notion.

Your site should be updated frequently.
No need to do it.

A GOOGLE SITEMAP is an absolute necessity.
It is not required for average sites. The rank of your site will not be improved by it.

You have to submit your URL to search engines.
The truth is that search engines will find your site and index it if you provide a link to your site.

MYTHS ABOUT DESIGN

Black hat design techniques are certainly common.
The java script code is not illegitimate. And black hat is not the only one who uses it.

Flash cannot be used.
If flash is one element of your page, you should certainly use flash, but not if it happens to be a completely flash site.
Flash is best reserved for text based sites.

Navigation should not be images. It has to be text links.
The truth is that if you use ALT tags graphical navigation is absolutely ok.

W3C must validate your HTML code.
Even google cannot provide validation.

MYTHS ABOUT BUILDING LINKS

Presence in yahoo directory and DMOZ is a must to ensure good rankings in google.
Forget it, it is not worth the money.

In search results pages are ranked in the order of page rank.
Wrong again. You can safely ignore the page rank of google toolbar because it is not accurate.

Reciprocal links do not matter.
Reciprocal links do count if they are from the right site.

Accuracy is the second name of google’s link command.
It is in reality useless. The yahoo link command or google webmaster tools are far better.

MYTHS ABOUT PPC

Organic rankings will be affected by PPC ads.
False.

Organic rankings will be improved by PPC ads.
Not at all true.

MYTHS ABOUT CONTENT

Your site will be penalized if you use duplicate content.
No such penalty exists. But duplicates will be filtered out in favor of originals by the search engine or what the search engine considers original.

For long tail searches there is need to optimize.
Not required. Search engines are capable of finding them by themselves.

There is need to optimize a webpage for a single phrase or keyword in every page.
It would be better to optimize each and every page for three to five related phrases. It would make your copy nice to read and cut out on monotony.

A specific density of keyword has to be maintained.
Tools which enable this make no sense.

Making your target keywords bold or italicized is another must.
False.

Page copies have to maintain a certain word limit.
In reality there is no such thing.

MYTHS ABOUT TAG

If keywords are found in comment tags it will adversely affect your rankings.
Completely false.

Keywords should be used in Meta keyword tags. It is also supposed that you have to use only those keywords that pepper the content of your page.
On the contrary, it has been recommended that keyword varieties which are not present in your webpage and misspelt keywords should be included in the keyword tag.

It is necessary to head tags. (A5, A9 etc).
Not required.

Your page URLs should be keyword rich.

Your domain should be rich in keywords.
Neither of the two is required.

MYTHS ABOUT SEO COMPANY

Without doing any on-page work, Seo companies can improve rankings.
Stay far away from these companies making false claims.

Companies claiming to share special relationship with google!
Don’t let such a company take you for a ride. Google doesn’t share relationships with organic SEO firms.

Companies claiming to use proprietary method.
It is a damn lie.

Companies will tamper with your rankings if you stop paying them. Bullshit.

Companies being able to place pages in your desired position.
Unless they use sponsored spots or PPC, this is impossible.

A top ranking generates more sales and traffic.
If you use phrases and keywords which people usually search for, only then will your good ranking be justified.

One of the most important features of the SEO process is linking campaign or back linking.
A ranking algorithm is employed by popular search engines like google, yahoo, msn etc. to determine the quality of incoming links, to evaluate the value of that link to that search engine, to evaluate the content on the blog linking in or the site, the link text, page rank of the linking site and a host of other such things. The gist of the story is that everyone desires the right kind of sites with the best type of link and not just anyone linking into your site.

WHAT IS BACKLINKING?

Creating links between your website and other relevant websites is called back linking in internet parlance. Of great importance is also the kind of text you use in your back links. Your most desirable keyword phrases should be stamped on your back link. There are many websites which enjoy a high rank on the web page of search engines simply by virtue of proper back links though they don’t meet any other SEO criterion.
However, search engines also qualify the back links apart from counting the number of back links you have.

HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHICH IS THE BEST TYPE OF LINK?

Those links that use the keyword you are trying to rank for are the right type of back links. For e.g. if a virtual online shop sells sports furniture or items of interior decoration, you would like a prospective buyer or enthusiast to blog about the items for sale in your shop , create a link to your site and this would generate free publicity, improve the good will of your business and maybe translate into sales.

BEST WAYS OF USING BACKLINKS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

In order to find the right kind of sites to which you would like to link your website, sift through google to zero in on your keyword and cast a glance at the top hundred listings. If they are not your rivals, you would want to get the maximum number of these to link to you.

You can also examine each of those site’s back links and try to obtain some links from those pages in case you fail in the first step. A tool like BACK LINK WATCH comes in handy to find out who is linking to your rival websites or to the primary ones.

Stay far away from paid links for they are being penalized by search engines, link swapping and linking farms i.e. link within the actual content on the webpage.

Go for linking bait also referred to as viral marketing. Anything like a fun web game or free tools or videos or good content that would make people want to link to it is called link bait. However you have to check whether it is associated with the keyword you are trying to rank for so that the people who will link in will, naturally use those keywords.

Press is also another medium to advertise. Suppose a blog praises the service you offer or a new product that you have started selling, but it has forgotten to use your link, dispatch an email quickly and request them to link to your site by using one of your keywords, present in their article. Trust me, it really works.

The best way is to create your own blog, fill it with content that your target audience wants to read. Then create a link back to your own home page using your keyword. Blowing your own trumpet always helps in business.

Try to figure out which sites your audience is likely to frequent and reach out to those sites. Offer to contribute your content. They might publish it if it is well written and worth reading and interesting enough. Post your comments on blogs and forums not only to simply insert your link but also to add a valuable dimension to the discussion. Be careful while doing it or you might end up being banned for your blunt commercial approach.

You can try out a few more ways to use back links to your advantage.

While online, the moment you come across something that has a YOUR HOME PAGE option, post your comment.

Make use of blogroll or wordpress, exchanges of link, your link in emails, press releases, and your links in forums or you can submit

your site or link to directories. You may write reviews or articles for people and insert your website URL. Whatever you do, practice discretion and don’t breach internet protocols.

If you spend 30 minutes to one hour out of 24 hours to create back links in this way, almost immediately you will see significant results. Do it and you will be better off for it.

You have to be aware of and serious about linking strategies if you are adamant about a great ranking on google. There are innumerable ways of obtaining links. Our focus will be on strategies which are free or low cost, fast and provide the very best output. I will recommend three tactics that will push you to the top of the lot in google before you can blink your eyes.

We shall start off with obtaining incoming links from various directories. Google attaches great importance to links from directories because google looks at them as forms of endorsement. Some of the popular or not so popular directories are yahoo and DMOZ.org i.e. the open directory project. They power most of the search engines like google. No directory is similar and for getting links to sites they offer various kinds of options. Featured below is a list of the different ways in which various directories link to different sites:

FEATURED HOMEPAGE LINK
On the homepage of a website you will find this link featured. It will cost you a bomb!

FEATURED LINK
If you pay the stipulated fee your link will grab a premium spot.

RECIPROCAL LINK
You have to first link to the directory. Only then will they link back.

PAID SUBMISSIONS
If you shell out the stipulated fee, the link that you have submitted will be reviewed and the page will possibly be listed. They might charge you an annually recurring fee or pay in installments. Yahoo will charge a whopping $300 to review a commercial site.

FREE SUBMISSION
Yes, it is free. And they are not taking you for a ride. Submit your link to DMOZ. It is the best. Yahoo search, AOL, GOOGLE are all powered by it. However submission guidelines should be strictly followed and carefully choose the most suitable subcategory to include your link.

Yahoo in spite of being so expensive and the most popular cannot be called the best in any way. If you list yourself with DMOZ, you will be more benefited than if you list yourself with the damn expensive yahoo, and to top it all, DMOZ is free! Yahoo’s popularity can be attributed to its being a directory that is frequented by people. Whereas, search engines account for the popularity of DMOZ and the latter is more value for worth. Being nominated by DMOZ is a great thing.

TOP 5 DIRECTORIES
Apart from DMOZ.COM, there are four other top directories where you can enlist for free like visitalink.com, getlistedrightnow.com, domaining.in and directoryvault.com. Affordable expedited listing services are also offered by some of them, as well as featured listings.

An updated list of directories can be found in one site, but all these directories do not offer free enlistment. You have to check all of them individually to see which ones are free.

THE PROCESS

1- First Visit TopWebSiteTips.com

2- Next Scroll down to the bottom of the webpage till you reach the drop down box

3- Thirdly Choose the google PR you like

4- Then Search

5- Fifthly , Click on the general directories only box after 1st return set if you want to do away with niche directories that will be displayed in the results

6-Finally Rerun the search

You can also avail yourself of the paid submission service to make the major directories enlist your site. However this doesn’t come free and will cost you some money. Check out that they do the following:

1- They are submitting it only manually.

2- Verify to see whether your site is already enlisted or not

3- They have to provide you with proof of submission [screen captures generally]

SEONext offers an extremely viable directory submission service but you can check out on google to see if there are others. There are many in fact and many of them are pretty good. The slow submission service that they offer makes the process of creating links appear even more natural to various search engines including google.

Conventional reciprocal link campaigns can be a tad slow if lacking in automated software, but it is the best way to obtain quality links.

TEN STEPS FOR RECIPROCAL LINKING CAMPAIGN

1- you have to first enlist the important attention grabbing keywords

2- using the customization tips given at the end, prepare a standard letter which you can easily customize for the various sites

3- run searches on google for all the keywords. Note the matching URL for each

4- from the list strike out direct rivals

5- run a check through your list. Each site has its contact information. Jot them down properly.

6- build links to all the pages from which you want to obtain links. It is not the homepage however. It should be from that page on your website that is most suitable. Limit yourself to a maximum of ten outgoing links per page. Remember, less is more.

7- customize the email. Outline the considerations below. Send the mail

8- you should verify the back links given

9- if there is any outgoing link that does not reciprocate within 30 days, strike it out

10- every fortnight, check your incoming links. Conduct another check to see whether you have been relegated to a not so viable page by the people linking to you and whether you are still receiving the links you were promised or not.