Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a rapidly evolving art. There isn’t too much of a chance that your Grandfather can teach you about SEO. In fact, anything he did know is likely outdated now. This article will teach you five things about SEO that your Grandfather never told you.

1. Keyword META Tag is Dead: The days of stuffing your keyword meta tag full of keywords is dead. Google doesn’t care about the META keyword tag anymore. Your title tag is much more important, so make sure your target keyword is there. The only reason I even use the keyword meta tag, is pure superstition. Google is actually on record as saying they do not use the keyword meta tag in their ranking algorithm.

2. Reciprocal Linking is Dying: I still get offers in my email from people looking to trade links from their homepage to mine. What is the point? Google caught on to these ages ago. essentially the links cancel each other out. A link that will lead to a lot of traffic might be worth taking though. Even if there is no Google benefit, a link that drives people to your site is helpful.

3. SEO Starts With Each Page, not Entire Websites: Google posts their results as pages, not websites. This means you should be optimizing each of your pages. Unique title tags are necessary. When you are creating backlinks, send some to your inner pages. Google views backlinks to inner pages as natural, so they will help your homepage rank higher as well.

4. PageRank Is Nothing You Should Obsess About: Google PageRank is great but don’t lose sleep over it. PageRank is almost fully dependent on the quality of and quantity of your back-links…not much else. Concentrate on building links and your PageRank will increase naturally.

5. You Don’t Have to Do it Yourself: In your Grandfathers day SEO was a grassroots activity that webmasters took on themselves. This is no longer true. Dedicate your time to creating content, products and improving your service. Leave the grind of SEO to one of the many capable SEO companies out there. They have the man power and resources many small businesses simply don’t have.

SEO is continuously evolving, if you don’t keep up to date with the changes then your results will suffer. Our Grandfathers have taught us a lot of lessons in our lives, but SEO isn’t one of them. If you handle your own SEO, make sure you keep track of the current trends. If you can’t stay current, then outsource to the professionals who can.