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The unbelievable things that I read about SEO get crazier all the time. What you should do and should not do are the same if you check different places that refer to SEO. This can get confusing for the new website master and even me at times. You have to be careful what you believe and need to test it out fully to see what works best for you.

If you make a change to your web page, your ranking may go up in Google for that page, but was it because of the change or would it have gone up anyway? There are a lot of reasons why your page rank may have gone up, and they may not have to do with that particular page change at all.

Confusing cause and effect is very common in with new SEO's. This would not be a problem, but they spread this information as fact and it gets posted on forums and blogs and unfortunately influences other unsuspecting newbies. Don't always believe everything you read.

Here are 10 of the most common SEO Myths:

Myth 1: You should submit your URL's to search engines. This may have helped at one time but has not been necessary for a long time now.

Myth 2: You need a Google Sitemap. If your site is built correctly, you don't need a Google Sitemap. It doesn't hurt you to have one, and you may be interested in Google's other Webmaster Tools, but having a Google Sitemap isn't going to matter in your page ranking.

Myth 3: You need to update your site frequently. If you change your site, it will cause it to be crawled, but it won't increase your rankings. There are sites on the internet that have not been changed in years, and they have some of the highest ranking in Google.

Myth 4: PPC ads will help/hurt ranking. Half of the people who think that running Google AdWords will affect their organic rankings believe that it hurts; the other half believe it helps. That alone should tell you that neither is true!

Myth 5: Your site will be banned if you ignore Google's guidelines. You don't need to worry about Google's guidelines if you use common sense and don't do anything strictly for search engines that you wouldn't do anyway. Read them if you want to, but it is not mandatory in or to be an SEO. By the way, Google guidelines are much better than before and may even have some information that will help you.

Myth 6: Your site will be banned if you buy links. This one does have some roots in reality, as Google likes to scare people about this. They, of course, do not want to count links if they can figure out if they are paid, but how will they know? The worst that would happen is that they will not count these links. It would not be good business for them to ban an entire site simply because they have paid links.

Myth 7: H1 (or any header tags) must be used for high ranking. There's not much evidence to suggest that keywords in H tags affect rankings, yet this myth continues. My own tests don't seem to show them making a difference, although it's difficult to know for sure. Use them if it works with your design or content management system, and, if it does not, then don't. I doubt that you'll find it makes a difference one way or the other.

Myth 8: Words in your meta keyword tag have to be used on the page. Meta keyword tags were actually originally designed to be used for keywords that were NOT on the page; it is funny how things get turned around. This tag is ignored by Google and used only for uncommon words in Yahoo, therefore it makes little difference.

Myth 9: SEO copy must be 250 words in length. I recently read an article by the person who actually started this myth back in the 90's. What was actually said was that 250 was simply a good amount to be able to write a nice page of copy that can be optimized for 3-5 keyword phrases. Short or long ranks good either way depending on the copy and what you can get done in the amount of words you decide to use. Just be sure to use the amount of words necessary to say everything you need to say about that particular subject.

Myth 10: You need to optimize for the long tail. No, you don't. Long-tail keyword phrases are uncompetitive, which means that not many pages are using those words. This also means that not many people are searching for them in the engines. Ranking for long-tail keywords is easy, just include them somewhere in a blog post or an article, and you'll rank for them, but that's not optimization.

Before you start spreading a myth about SEO, test it many times, and even then it may not be a sure thing. Even if it does work for you, keep in mind that there are always factors involved that made it work for you that may not let it work for someone else.