Some search engine optimization “experts” are fond of making theories based on a few random observations. These include things like
- domains that contain keywords are very important!
- keywords in domains don’t matter at all
- .com and .edu domains rank well, .info domains don’t.
- Your organic ranks will fall if you start using Google Adwords
- Your organic ranks will improve if you start using Google Adwords
Some of these theories contradict one another!
You can use SEO Lab Professional to easily and quickly verify these types of claims.
SEO Lab makes it very easy to type in various phrases and check how many of the top ranked domains have keywords in them, hyphens in them and so on.
You can also quickly check if the top adword advertisers rank well organically. SEO Lab lists the organic rankings of each advertiser along with the advertisement text.
So are the facts listed above true?
Well, you won’t know unless you verify them yourself!
Do remember that a few random positives doesn’t mean it is true in all cases!
Many adword advertisers simply don’t bother too much about organic rankings. So many of them don’t rank well. It doesn’t mean that paying for adwords is bad for organic ranking! You can easily find other advertisers who rank well in organic SERPs.
The truth is, sites are ranked based on a number of algorithmic rules. The search engines often change their algorithms based on what they consider attempts to game their system. Even the officially announced “facts” can change a few months later!
SEO is more about using your common sense. Do the things that make sense and stop worrying about things you can’t control.
Make sure that your web pages make it easy for your customers to learn about your product and or service. Do the basic SEO, write articles and reports that will be useful to your customers, issue press releases when there is some thing newsworthy and so on.
About SEO Lab
SEO Lab is the premium competition research tool available for Windows users (there is also a beta SEO Lab Mac OS X version).
