Search engine myths are all over the place especially Google related myths. No matter if you are a newbie blogger or a seasoned pro blogger, chance are you have head and possibly believed a few myths related to search engines that have been circulating around the web for a long time. Especially myths about Google. And Google’s secrecy about how its search engine operates, has helped to spread such myths.

I cant find any clear answers, so My brains comes up with an answer that makes sense to me; I write about it, you pick it up, add your own take on it and write about it, another person reads your post and they do the same with it and so on. This circle continues over and over again, until after a while it becomes like a god given word and everybody takes it as a fact.

Well, I am going to challenge that. Here are some of the most well-known Google myths along with a few questions that I like you to ask yourself. After reading this post, you can decide for yourself if you wanna believe those myths or you believe that they indeed are only myths. With that said, here are 4 Google Related Myths (at least from my point of view):

Myth # 1: You should get backlinks only from “relevant” sites, otherwise you will get penalized by Google.
This is totally nonsense. Look at all the social bookmarking sites that have incoming links from thousands of sites that have no relevancy to “social bookmarking” topic what so ever. How come they are not penalized? How come sites like dig and twitter are amongst the highest ranking sites?…

Myth # 2: Building too many link too quick may get your penalized by Google.

Isn’t everybody telling you write quality content so other people will link to you? So, what will happen if you write a fantastic post that goes viral and hundreds of sites link to your site? Isn’t that whats happening to sites like Facebook, twitter (not because of their content obviously, but because of their usefulness)?

Myth # 3: You have to use different keywords for your anchor text or Google will penalize you.

Do a search for “click here” in Google! Adobe is #1! Because thousands of websites have used the “click here” keyword to link to adobe. If adobe was penalized, then how come its still #1 for that keyword. Plus, how would you control what anchor text keywords other people use to link to you?

Myth # 4: Don’t submit the same articles to article directoires, because Google will penalize you for duplicate content.

There is no such a thing as duplicate content penalty, at least not in a way most people think. If that was the case, then whats with all the high pr successful article directories all over the internet? Most of them have the same articles published on their sites with the exact title and everything. How come we never hear about any article directory being penalized for having duplicate content? Take EzineArtciles for example; You can find the same articles published on ezine, on other article directories, websites, and blogs. Yet, ezine receives thousands of visitors a day and has a page rank of 6!

These are some of the mostly wide spread and sadly most believed myths out there that just a few simple questions will easily shake their foundation. So, the next time you hear any of the above myths or any other myths for that matter, stop for a second and ask yourself a few questions. Usually you can find such questions and also the answer to them by looking at big well-known website and how the myth may related to them.

Please feel free to challenge my questions and my position on any of the above things that I believe to be only myths. As I said, since there are no official answers, no one really knows the answer, including me. So I am open to debate.

Also, please feel free to leave a comment and share with us any other search engine related myths, especially Google related myths you know of.

Just a few days ago I caught a glimpse of something circulating on Twitter that caught my attention-it appeared to be a eulogy of sorts for SEO.  The links were pointing to an article written by one of the web’s elder statesman, Mr. Ben Elowitz, entitled “SEO Is Dead, And The New King Is SMO“.  Over the weekend Ben and I actually had an opportunity to dialog on the topic and given the implications I thought I’d share it with you.

But before I do let me first say in plain terms that SEO is not dead as a matter of fact by the end of this post you will see why I believe that SEO has been born again.  A major premise to Elowitz’s post is that the reliance of search engines upon algorithms is no match for the consumer knowledge base that social platforms are able to amass around their users.

This argument comes across as being much more academic than practical.  Because, by inference, what Ben is really saying is that a consumer in need of an answer cares about where his/her answer comes from-algorithm vs predictive knowledge engine.  As an internet marketer I’ve interacted with numerous consumers and have never heard a consumer say that they prefer getting their answers from Facebook versus Google.

In my rebuttal to Ben I addressed this concluding that online consumers are channel agnostic, meaning that all they’re looking for is an answer so whether the answer comes from a search engine or a social platform makes no difference to them as long as the answer addresses their questions convincingly.  Using this as the measuring stick its easy to see that SEO and SMO should be looked at mores as neighbors or colleagues than adversaries.

Furthermore, I’d like to address this from a personal experience point of view and say that what I’ve seen as an Internet marketer is a decent mix of traffic from both search engines and social platforms.  This brings me to another point-the conversion rate for consumers coming from social platforms has been but a fraction of the conversion rate of search engine surfers. And I don’t get the sense that this is an isolated case as I’ve heard a number of other marketers say the same thing.

Where we’re headed with this argument is that perhaps SEO or search in general has that no other online tactic does is this thing called “intent”.  You see when goes to Bing and types “atlanta hawks front row seats” into the search box you can bet your bottom dollar that this is someone who wants to buy tickets.  Contrast this to someone who “Likes” the Atlanta Hawks fan page…what exactly does being “liked” mean to you as a marketer? Well, it could mean that the person intends to buy tickets but it could also mean a million other things.

This is why I like to view SEO and SMO as a tag team duo.  You build awareness with social media; while simultaneously building and testing a user-centric site that does such a terrific job at meeting the consumer’s goals that they can’t help to spread the word which in turn generates both back-links and objective online conversations so that the search engines can’t help but take notice of your website.  So by the time the users are in the position where they need to do a search to find the answers to their problems they’ve already been exposed to your brand enough that they feel confident when clicking your first page result on Google and they click thru to a conversion.

This is the new face of SEO.  You see…In the wake of the new media revolution SEO is not about manipulating search engines as article’s such as Ben’s would have you believe, but instead its about speaking to user intent with knock em’ dead content.  When marketers do this their SMO and SEO implementation will be the one-two punch that they can count on to get the job done.

As a blogger you have to consider your time very carefully and make sure you improve your efficiency.  It is far too easy to spend so much time on social networks or submitting content to a plethora of article submission directories that you may get lost and not see a return on investment.  Remember that even while blogging time is money and if you are spending time doing any activity you have to make sure you see benefits from that time being spent.

The top action items you want to follow when handling your Article Submission Directories are the following:

• Track Visits
• Expand Network
• Weed out what doesn’t work

I highly recommend using Google Analytics for keeping tabs on your website traffic.  Make sure you are looking at your referring sites and you are seeing some decent traffic from the sites you are constantly submitting your articles to. Of course some submission sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and others depend on the size of your own network of “friends” typically to indicate how popular posts get and how much traffic you will get as well, but you can still get a good value of where to spend more time or build up your friendships to improve value of one or more directories.

One way to try and improve your visits from article submission services is leveraging social media and promoting your link on the article submission directly rather than the original article posted on  your site instead.  This can provide users an easy way of “connecting” with you or digging, stumbling, voting up your content.  This can help also expand your network on that directory and is a good way of possibly introducing that directory to other users who many not already be signed up.

The target goal for every blogger is to diversify where their sources of traffic are coming from, you want to make sure you have a clean 35%/35%/30% (Search/Referral/Direct) traffic to your blog. If you find your referral visits are a lower % then you need to focus more on submitting content to new and different social submission services, or just expand upon the services you are already using to try and increase your network and thereby increase the number of visitors coming to your site.

If you see that one site (example:  Reddit.com) is only bringing in 35 visits per month to your blog, then you know this site is not being leveraged very well or isn’t working for your articles and you should refocus and use another site instead.  Know that some sites cater more toward specific “categories” of blogs, like Digg favors “News/Technology/Politics” and StumbeUpon seems to favor sites in the “Arts/Design/Creative” space from my own experience.  Learn what submission directories appeal toward your niche/theme and target those more than others but still remember to submit articles to as many directories as you can at least once per week or month so you keep up some presences on those networks.

BlogEngage has actually been one of the best article submission directories for myself over the past month, and consistently is in my top 5 referral engines for two of my own blogs.  BlogEngage brings me more traffic to my blogs than Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx or any other article submission site with the exception of StumbleUpon.  This tends to be because the readers of BlogEngage articles are a more of a tight knit community than some of the other article submission services.

The trick is to find out which article submission directories bring in the most traffic and keep expanding your networks, also for backlink purposes it is always good to have a few articles submitted to every article directory service you can find.

So tell me what are your favorite article submission sites?  What works best for you and how do you leverage them to maximize your traffic or grow your network?

I’ll be the first to admit when something doesn’t work out. Six weeks ago I started the Blog Engage SEO and Keyword Challenge.

The idea of this challenge we to get our members to try and rank for targeted keywords in Google and other major search engines.

On my personal SEO and Marketing blog I selected the keywords Social Networking Tips.

I did so much marketing from building backlinks and guest posting but it seems I still cannot get my article to the top of the search rankings.

I followed some of the best suggestions in the industry but still my article remains in the lower part of the second page within Google.

If you have been following me I have been doing some but not limited to the following.

• Research and Analysis

• Article Creation

• Building the Article

• Publishing the Article

• Social Bookmarking

• Guest Blogging

• Keep Going

• Evaluation

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

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Thanks,

Brian

15 days left in our SEO and Keyword Challenge. If your just tuning in now over the last 30 days we have been trying to rank for a specific and target keyword in Google.

This wasn’t a contest per say but an experiment for our members.

The point was to learn how to rank higher in Google for targeted keywords. Below you will find everything I have done to date to rank in Google.

Don’t even think it’s to late to join. You can start your 45 days right now and try to rank for your keywords. Simply follow all my steps and you will be well on your way.

• Research and Analysis

• Article Creation

• Building the Article

• Publishing the Article

• Social Bookmarking

• Guest Blogging

• Keep Going

I think I may be standing alone here in this challenge but at least you can all see what’s happening and watch my status. I assume once I’m successful you will all start referring back to these articles. That is if I’m successful however. I still have a few more sports to move up in the search ranking to achieve success in this challenge.

The term I’m trying to rank high from is Social Networking Tips. Right now in Google I’m sitting on the second page about half way down.

I have about three more guest articles being released this week that will link back to my article. Hopefully that will improve my over all rankings.

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

27 days has passed since we first started the Blog Engage SEO Keyword Challenge.

If your just tuning in now I recently challenged our members to try and rank for specific keywords and phrases within 45 days of publishing their article.

I helped our members by writing articles in which they could use to promote, market and develop their rankings within Google search engines.

Don’t hesitate to still join in our 45 day SEO Challenge. Your 45 days can start as soon as your article is published. Make sure to visit our past articles for great ideas on how to achieve your goals.

• Research and Analysis

• Article Creation

• Building the Article

• Publishing the Article

• Social Bookmarking

• Guest Blogging

To date my article on Social Networking Tips is sitting half way down the third page of Google.

Surprisingly it’s harder then I thought to rank for this keyword but don’t count me out yet. I have about 4 guest articles going to be published this week and over the next 14 days that should help my article get a higher ranking. I actually expected this to be a lot better but it seems I have my work cut out for me.

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Over the last 19 days I have been showing our members here in the community easy and simple ways to rank high in Google’s Search Engine for targeted keywords.

The entire process is fairly simple to follow so if your just starting to read now make sure to look back at our past articles.

Understanding that SEO takes time and dedication is the most important aspect of franking for target keywords.

You want to ensure you build back links at a natural pace and not like an auto bot spam software.

• Research and Analysis

• Article Creation

• Building the Article

• Publishing the Article

• Social Bookmarking

Today I would like to discuss the importance of Guest Blogging when ranking in search engines. I think the most important aspect would be finding a guest blog that is in a niche similar to the keywords your ranking for.

So many factors come into play when qualifying a blog for your guest article. You have to make sure the guest blog has all unique content, isn’t banned or blocked from Google and again is it in your niche.

What you want to do is use similar categories as you did in your initial article and the same goes for the article tags.

Also you should market that article and build it’s back links. In time this will benefit the article your linking to. So go out, find a few places to guest blog and link back top your article using rich keywords in the anchor text.

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

If your just joining our SEO Keyword Challenge it’s not to late to participate. This isn’t a Challenge that yields a winner this is a personal challenge for our members and a lesson to be learned about SEO and Keyword Marketing.

If you’re interested in catching up and following the challenge be sure to read the entire series.

Starting with Research and Analysis, moving to Article Creation, over to Building the Article and finally Publishing the Article.

In today’s article we will be discussing the importance of social bookmarking and how to do it properly ranking us as high as possible in Google and other Search Engines.

Similar to publishing your article the most important aspect to social bookmarking is creating relevant back links to your article.

Proper Category – Make sure the site has the proper category for you to submit your article. This is very important because any links going back to your article that are unrelated or not relevant is a waste of your time.

Proper Tags – Similar to what I said about your blog post you have to make sure you post relevant tags on your article. Please make note that you should change up your tags on every bookmark you make. So make sure they are all different and relevant. We want to avoid any type of duplicate content.

Unique Title – When submitting and book marketing your article make sure to use a unique but relevant title for you story. Do not copy and paste your information. Also ensue that every site you submit to is different. This is why I said do not be lazy make it count.

Unique Description – Similar to the title your description must be unique as well. Simply no copy and pasting your first paragraph. Make sure you sue simile and relevant keywords during this process but please do change it up for every bookmark you do.

What websites to use when bookmarking?

Blog Engage

Mixx

Delicious

Propeller

Reddit

Digg

Yahoo Buzz

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Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Subscribe to my blog as well

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian