Here is an example: Let's assume you make a change to your website content. Maybe after a few days you notice that your Google ranking for a certain keyword has altered. Now, it would be natural for you to assume that your content change had led to change in ranking. However, it may not be true. Your ranking could have changed due to several reasons, and may have absolutely nothing to do with the changes made to the content.

Of course, this action of mixing up the cause and effect is a common error on the part of new SEOs. Well, if it were limited to just their work, I wouldn't really mind it. But these guys are clueless and many a times spread their ignorance to other newbies on blogs and forums and create a ripple effect of newer myths. Here, I am making an attempt to discuss and clear the top 10 organic SEO myths:

Organic SEO Myth 1: You must submit your website URL to search engines. Once upon a time, this could have been the "in" thing. But since the past 5-6 years it has become unnecessary.

Organic SEO Myth 2: In order to get better ranking, you absolutely need a Google Sitemap. It's partially correct. However, if you have built your site properly (ensured its crawler-friendly) you don't require a Google Sitemap. That being said, having one won't hurt you and you can even use other Webmaster Central tools offered by Google, but this doesn't guarantee higher ranking.

Organic SEO Myth 3: For higher rankings, update your website regularly. Regular updating of your content pages may certainly increase the crawl rate for search engines, but not your website rankings. Only update your website content if it is necessary and not because search engines will like it any better. As a matter of fact, the highest ranked websites on Google are those that haven't been updated in years!

Organic SEO Myth 4: PPC (pay per click) ads can help or hurt rankings. What amuses me most is that many people believe that participating in Google AdWords campaigns will hurt their organic SEO ranking, while many others believe that PPC will spike the traffic and up the ranking. All I can say is that neither of this is true!

Organic SEO Myth 5: Not following guidelines on Google will ban your website. Google's guidelines are common sense but not mandatory. It's advisable to read them, however just don't do anything purely for search engines and you'll be fine.

Organic SEO Myth 6: Buying links can lead to banning of your website. It is partially true again. Google doesn't like to count paid links as votes for a website page. Mostly Google is unable to find out if the links are paid for, but even if it does, it won't count the links. Google won't ban your website in any case. A quick update - Google has made it easier to report paid links in sites that are unrelated to your site. Though the reasoning is yet unclear and best practice should tell you don't buy links in unrelated sites to your theme.

Organic SEO Myth 7: Header tags or H1 should be used to ensure high ranking. There is no evidence to prove this. However, this is one of the most common myths. You can reach top Google positioning without H1 but they certainly don't hurt so use H tags correctly.

Organic SEO Myth 8: Meta keywords tag need to be used on your page. The fact is that a Meta keyword tag was introduced to use keywords that are NOT on the site page already! However, this tag is ignored by Google in any case.

Organic SEO Myth 9: The SEO copy should be 250 words in length. 250 words is not really an optimal number nor is it specific for SEO rankings. Easily, 250 words allows one to write good marketing copy and can be optimized for 3-5 main key phrases. However, shorter SEO copy works just as well.

Organic SEO Myth 10: Your pages should be optimized for the long tail keywords. This is not true. Nowadays, long-tail keyword phrases are no longer effective as not many pages use them and not many people search using long tails. You can include these keywords in blogs or even an article, but that is not really optimization.

Remember don't go spreading any SEO myths that you believe may be true. Test it yourself several times on different websites before reaching any conclusion as there are other factors involved as well.

(Source: seo-news.com/)

Acquisition intended to enhance platform for comprehensive Web
analytics and extend offerings for on-line marketers

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Apr 09, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of Tensa Kft., more commonly known as IndexTools, a leading provider of Web analytics software for online marketing. The acquisition includes IndexTools' Web analytics business and technology as well as its Tensa R& D Kft. subsidiary. Upon completion of the acquisition, the addition of the IndexTools' assets is intended to expand Yahoo!'s powerful set of services designed to maximize its clients' online marketing efforts.

"Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns," said Bassel Ojjeh, senior vice president and head of Yahoo!'s Strategic Data Solutions group. "We expect that the IndexTools' technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!'s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world's advertisers."

The acquired technology is expected to extend Yahoo!'s current analytics offerings by adding capabilities to deliver relevant insights and metrics for online campaigns that run across the entire Yahoo! network. Following the acquisition, the first group of customers to benefit from these enhanced tools will be more than 150,000 small-to-medium businesses marketing on the Web with Yahoo!. Additional capabilities enabling third-party developers to monitor and optimize the traffic performance of their applications are expected to follow throughout the year following the acquisition.

"At the IndexTools group, we have developed a large base of global customers by delivering a reliable, scalable and comprehensive platform for monitoring and analyzing sophisticated marketing campaigns," said Marton Szoke, Managing Director of Tensa. "Our commitment to generating the most important insights, and placing them at our customers' fingertips, makes the IndexTools platform a wonderful match with Yahoo! and we are thrilled to have this opportunity to help advance online advertising as part of one of the world's leading brands."

"The passionate and talented engineers at IndexTools have built a powerful analytics solution and just as importantly, their focus on delighting customers with the features and tools they truly need to excel is an excellent fit with Yahoo!," said Ojjeh. "We're excited and looking forward to welcoming these engineers to Yahoo!'s own deep engineering team."

IndexTools offers a scalable analytics platform for companies' online marketing activity in each phase of the customer lifecycle. With IndexTools Web Analytics and Bid Management, businesses gain accurate, insightful and timely intelligence about the effectiveness of their online marketing.

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2008.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit pressroom.yahoo.com or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning the proposed transaction (including without limitation the statements contained in the quotations from management in this press release), as well as Yahoo!'s strategic and operational plans. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this press release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the possibility that the transaction will not close or that the closing may be delayed and the anticipated benefits to Yahoo! and its business customers, advertisers and publishers may not be realized. More information about potential factors that could affect Yahoo!'s business and financial results is included under the captions, "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations," in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2007, which is on file with the SEC and available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.

SEO aka Search Engine Optimization is a process of having a website come up higher in the search results when you search with a query or keyword. There are crawler based search engines like Google and Human based directories

Now lets see how a Crawler based search engine works

Crawlers or Spiders are automated robots that crawls the web constantly to find new websites and links. The spiders visit the site whenever there is a new site is built and online. Depending on the popularity and recency of the update of your site, the crawlers visits the site. The more fresh content a site has, the more often the crawler will visit the site, what does this mean to you? Well if you have a website for a while or may be a new site, it is very important for you to update the site often, this does not necesssarily mean that you have to change the look and redesign the site often, it means that you have to have fresh content or the copy or the message which you are conveying to the visitors.

How can you add content?

You can add content if you have a press release or add more pages, give related articles, if there is something new with your company add that in your site, Create a seperate page for news, artciles, blogs and resources, keep posting new and interested articles and writing there in those pages, add links to your site, point to trusted sites, get links from trusted sites.

Lets say if you are expert in your field, write articles and post those articles in the site. There are tons of ways to add fresh content to your site. This allows the spiders to visit your site more often because the spiders can understand that your site is updated often.

For example: If you have a website for Bad Credit Mortgages in Sarasota Florida. you can talk and write articles about Bad Credit, Mortgages, Sarasota and a combination of all of these as well and post an article ans tell the visitors how to apply for Mortgages and to people with Bad Credit to How to Apply for Mortgages in Sarasota Florida.

Now once the crawlers relialzes that your site is updated often, it will visit your site often and now it know and what the spiders do is, It takes a snap shot of your website, it crawls your website remember it will only crawl if you allow the crawlers to crawl your site, you can also restrict the crawlers not to visit your site, So once you have the crawlers visit your site, it looks at your Page Title, Description, HTML tags and then it stores in the database. Now whenever some search for that keyword, it goes back to the index, (the place where it stores the sites in alphabetic order) and looks at the most relevant site using algorithm or formulas such as Keyword in the Title, Description, Copy a good Meta tag, Good links from and to other trusted sites. Freshness and all other formulas and then list the results.

So when we search for something like Sarasota Mortgage for People with Bad Credit or XYZ the crawlers are not giving you live websites, but takes it from the database. So if you consider a good ranking result, first your site need to be crawled by the spiders.

In the part 2 of this article I will post more about ranking methods and formulas.

Until then have a great day.