3 SEO Myths Busted

by Alvaro Bellido, Guest Contributor

You have heard hundreds of stories around SEO and how it can make you rich in no time. You might have tried a few of them without getting any positive results. What are you doing wrong? Do these techniques actually work or are they just pure myths? Today, we'll uncover the real truth about 3 SEO Myths.

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​1. No Follow Links are Useless

You know that you need to build links to improve your SEO rankings, however these links must be 'follow' links in order to bring value to your domain. Well, this is not always the case.

The guys at SocialSEO carried out an experiment to evaluate whether 'no follow' links are useless from an SEO perspective. They bought two brand new domains and built 'no follow' links for 4 weeks and saw that both domains were ranking between page 1 - 5 for 5 chosen keywords.

From a link profile point of view you should also take into account that Google will look at all the links pointing to your domain and if most of them are 'follow' links this will be considered as unnatural. Google will then investigate further to see if you are building links which could end up in a penalty and a significant drop in rankings.

2. Internal Linking is Outdated

When it comes to building a good link profile you want authoritative sites pointing to your domain, but what about internal linking? Is there any value in the links that you create internally?

Actually, internal linking is one of the most effective SEO techniques that is underestimated by webmasters.

According to an experiment carried out by the guys at Greenlane, internal linking seems to actually have a very positive effect on rankings.
 
Internal linking must be carried out properly in order to have a real impact on rankings. My suggestion if you want to make this happen is to check the Moz guide on how to use internal linking.

3. A Good Link Must Be Keyword Rich

Getting a new link for your domain from a reputable site is always great news, however, rumor says if this link has a keyword in the anchor text it would definitely have a better impact on your rankings. Is this really the case? In order to give some insight on this topic, Court Tuttle carried out an experiment to see if it was possible to rank high in Google for a medium-competition keyword using only a single exact match anchor text link. It took him just 6 pieces of content, and 13 links (of which only one had the keyword as the anchor text) to make this page rank in 4th position after 53 days.

After releasing the Penguin update, Google has done a really good job of understanding what websites should be ranking highly for taking into account more than just the anchor text of links. My advice? Forget about keyword rich anchor text and create a natural link profile that will be organic and penalty free.

Alvaro Bellido regularly shares his expertise on SEO, AdWords, and more at his website Digital Mind London. You can also follow him on Twitter and Google+.

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IMAGE CREDIT: SEOPLANTER