With many webmasters and owners using their own search tactics to optimize their site’s performance, it is no surprise that along the way there have been many urban legends develop. One webmaster may vouch for a certain tactic they have used to achieve higher PageRank, while another will tell you that said tactic had the opposite effect on their site. Subtle nuances in various strategies can have a profound difference on the fruits of your labor, but there are some tactics that simply do not work and yet still manage to be considered valid. We will dispel five of the biggest search myths that actually cause more damage to your website than benefit.

Submitting Your Links to Search Engines

Once upon a time, submitting links to search engines was a major component of search engine optimization. You may even see commercials on TV to this day that offer to build your website and submit it to all the major search engines. What many fail to realize is that by having a properly-constructed website, this tactic is useless. Search engines can find just about anything on the internet, and the only way you will be ignored is if your site is built incorrectly. On top of that, if you submit your website or pages too often to search engines (pinging is a popular method of doing so), you may be labeled as a spammer and earn negative reputation when it comes to search prioritization.

Buying Links Will Get You Banned

This simply is not true and very rarely ever applies when it comes to sites like Google. For starters, most websites that use SEO buy some sort of advertising, which can be constituted as buying links. Generally, a search engine will discount links if they believe they are purchased, but only in the most severe circumstances of link buying and spamming does Google throw the hammer down on webmasters. It simply would take too much time to sift through each website and their algorithms cannot be accurately calibrated at this point to automatically determine who is gaming the system and who is not. If you’re failing to advertise because of this, you may be missing out on valuable gains.

PPC Advertising Can Help You

The truth is that many believe that PPC can help, while others believe it can hurt you. Since major search engines like Google offer these services built-in to their system, it can be easily deduced that neither is the case. You can, however, harm your long-term profit margins and recognition with customers by not engaging in Google Adwords campaigns. Getting your name out there is valuable in making impressions on people, which can lead to a gain in traffic among repeat customers.

Comments Are Always a Good Thing

This is one of the most dangerous assumptions made by webmasters. Comments generally are under the no-follow rule and simply do not factor into building link authority. When you post on a reputable website’s comment form, most likely you are not getting any benefits. For the small sliver of sites who do allow link building in comments, you probably do not want to be posting there in the first place. You are most likely wasting your time with these tactics, which leads to lost potential for your website (Tip: Check your search engine ranking with Pingler’s Search Engine Position Checker).

Copying Content Will Help Me

Absolutely not! Search engine algorithms are sophisticated enough to determine whether or not you have ripped content from another site. Besides being completely immoral, you may also find your site being blacklisted from Google and other major search engines. There is no road to victory for those who plagiarize.