SEO newcomers ‘have misconceptions’

Newcomers to search engine optimisation (SEO) have some misconceptions, such as repetitive keyword targeting being completely beneficial, it is said.

According to Rand Fishkin, writing for SEOmoz.org, it is often not advisable to have a keyword in the title tag, the first half and in the body text on each page of a website.

One tip randfish offers is to target one specific keyword term or phrase for each page and only rarely should someone running a site target the same term on numerous pages.

He also advises against splitting up efforts on multiple domains as it “can seriously detract from your goal of gaining rankings on a single site”.

“The days of link farms and link islands are long gone,” randfish claims, adding that link acquisition is now “getting the upper hand on quantity”, albeit slowly.

Results of the Hitwise UK Online Performance Awards, showing the ten most visited websites in the UK in 2008 for more than 60 industry categories, were released recently and www.next.co.uk topping the fashion chart.