ot all search engine-marketing firms or strategies are the same. Unfortunately, some techniques can actually hurt your positioning results more than help. Be sure to print this page and ask your webmaster "HOW" he/she plans to get top search engine results. The following are some myths about search engine optimization, including tactics you should avoid:
"Hide" lots of repetitive ophthalmology or LASIK keyword phrases on the home page that visitors can't see, but search engine spiders find. Hiding text to deceive the search engines is an outdated tactic. Most search engines (and competitors) can now detect hidden words and penalize your search engine results or ban your website.
Create invisible pages that are filled with spammed keywords that instantly take visitors to a different page or website when they visit them. This is a form of search engine "bait and switch." Tactics that try to trick or deceive search engines and consumers are short-term strategies and will hurt your search engine results in the long run.
Constantly resubmit your website to the search engines on a regular basis. Optimization is not a sport where the firm that submits the most frequently wins. In fact, frequently resubmitting your website, without modifying or updating parts of your website will likely hurt your search engine listings.
You have to pay search engines to get first-page listings. Search engines do offer the ability to purchase advertisement listings or "sponsored" listings. However, the most desirable listings are "natural" or free listings. Effective search engine optimization is intended to secure these positions.
Optimization is putting a lot of repetitive keywords in your website's meta tags. Simply putting in lots of repetitive keywords in your meta tags is called "keyword stuffing." Stuffing is not an effective strategy and will eventually get your website penalized or banned. Although strategic meta tags are part of comprehensive website optimization, it is only a small part. Meta tags alone will not generate dominant search engine positioning results.
Link Farms-Beware! Some search engine marketing firms link your site to a large network of irrelevant websites to artificially increase your "link popularity". Utilizing "link farms" that link lots of irrelevant websites to your website is a banned search engine tactic and will likely get your website removed from important search engines, like Google.
If you are not sure whether a tactic can hurt your results, here is an easy "Rule of Thumb": Automated or deceptive solutions that try to fool the search engines typically don't generate consistent long-term positioning results.
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