When you look for an SEO company, how do you know what and who to believe? Well our advice would be to do as much research as possible on the internet before you pick someone and make sure you completely understand how SEO works.

We have put together some common myths that you might hear and explain why they are not right:

1. Put Your Keywords in Your Domain Name

This is not the easiest one because it is true that it can help your SEO campaign if your keywords appear in your domain name. However the importance to search engines is relatively small and it is more important that people can remember your website address. Therefore you should keep it short and memorable and preferably include your company name.

2. Using a Google Partnership

If you are anything like us you have probably been approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google. They will then guarantee you certain places in the search engines for a fixed fee. If you get an offer like this do not take it. It is not true that any company has a partnership with Google and gets special treatment from them. In fact on Google's own website the state the following:

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

3. Meta Description Tag

You will hear many companies tell you that it is really important to optimise your meta description tag to get to the top of Google. However Google do not take this into account when they rank your website as they know it can be manipulated. It is however used as the small description in the search engine results so it is important to be well written to attract visitors to your website.

4. Meta Keyword Tag

You will hear many companies tell you about this tag and that you should make sure your keywords are all included. However this is now a defunct tag and the search engines do not even read it. It has absolutely no importance to your ranking or your website at all.

5. Content Length

There is not real length of content that will make a difference to your SEO campaign. However you should think about how long your content is for your visitors as you want to make your website easy to read and understand.

6. Duplicate Content

Many people will say you will be penalised for duplicate content. However if you write an article, add it to other websites and then to your site there will be no problem. Google sees the content appears in more than one place and displays only one of the pages. However this will not affect the ranking of your website as a whole.

7. Don't Use Flash

There is no reason to avoid Flash all together. If you want to add an image gallery the best way to do this is through Flash which will help you create an impressive website. The only things to avoid for search engine rankings are full Flash websites or Flash introductions.

There are many other myths and untruths you will hear from SEO professionals so you should be very careful. Check out any company before you employ them and make sure they know what they are doing.