Top 15 SEO myths

Top 15 SEO Myths

In the field of SEO and SEM, there’s a lot of discrepancy between experts of what works and what doesn’t.  Because of the secretive nature Google has placed around their indexing algorithms, a great deal of guesswork has been implemented and tested to find out what is true and what isn’t.  In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most popular misconceptions that have surfaced over the years since SEO was first conceived, and try to explain some of the reasons why they “just ain’t so.”

1. If you don’t submit your site to search engines, they won’t index it.  As long as another site links to yours, search engines will find it.  It doesn’t hurt to register with Google, Yahoo, and the other top search engines, but the fact is that you are better advised to spend time registering with respected web directories that correspond to the theme of your site.

2. You must periodically re-submit your site to keep it listed.  There is no reason whatsoever to justify resubmitting a site to a search engine.  Sites are not removed from a search index unless they are banned, or no longer exist at all.

3. Your ranking can be tweaked by using proper meta tags in web pages.  Improper Meta tags can HURT your ratings, but are not likely to help them signifigantly for SEO.  Be sure that any keywords used in the description are also used within the page content.  Beyond that, meta tags have little or no relevance for search engines at all.

4. You should make search engine ranking the priority, potential clients and customers will judge according to SE rank.  That’s a preposterous statement.  If your human visitors aren’t the most important reason for having a website, why do you have the site at all?  Most search engines will rank your site better if it is well written and navigable from a human usage standpoint.  Google’s algorithms seem to consider focus on human interaction a big positive influence.

5. You can manipulate your site status by concentrating on SEO as opposed to a well designed website.
Most people, self-professed SEO experts included, seem to think that there’s some secret method to shoot straight to the top of a search engines rankings.  The simple truth is that the better your site is designed, and the more useful (relevant) the information it contains, the better it will be rated.  A website that appears to be written expressly to gain ratings with search engines is more likely to find itself banned from their lists completely.  Never forget that humans are your target audience, not spider bots.  Nobody that isn’t working on developing indexing algorithms knows how they work exactly.  Most of them are under full-time analysis to improve them, and some people have even suggested that they may use randomization techniques expressly to prevent people from taking advantage of the system.  Besides, what works great for one search engine may cause red flags on the next one to crawl the site.

6. You can influence the search engines by using invisible or hidden keywords.
This is another preposterous assumption.  Everything on your site looks the same as everything else to a bot.  They don’t actually read your site, but instead process the information that is contained on the site.  Using too high of a keyword density is likely to cause your site to be rejected by search engines, regardless of what tricks you’ve tried to use to to fool them.  To a bot, there are no pictures, colors or backgrounds on the site, only links and tags on a text document. For example, “<blink>this doesn’t blink in  a text editor</blink>” is a single line of text, which begins with “<” and ends with “>”, nothing more.  To a bot, your page looks the same as it appears when loaded into a plain text editor.  Bells and whistles are for humans.. spiders couldn’t care less.  If your site appears, through the tags used on it, to be slanted away from human visitors, it is likely to be penalized, not congratulated.

7. You should get as many links as possible to your site, no matter how or where you get them from.
If anything, participating in link trading and junk sites that do nothing but provide links will get you banned.  Remember the old saying that you are judged by the company you keep.  If your site has numerous links from sites that are banned or have “bad” reputations, you are very likely to be considered just another bad influence.  Quality over quantity is an excellent rule of them.

8. Search engines are unable to handle sites with frames.
This was already covered in #6, above.  To a spider, your site is nothing but a plain text document.  Humans, on the other hand, may abandon your site if the frames are not very carefully implemented.  interior frame pages can’t be bookmarked, and when they are indexed by a search engine, may not display properly when a person follows the link.  Use frames if you wish, but should you choose to do so, use them very carefully, always taking into consideration what the result would be if someone landed on the site without going through the top frame.

9. Using Javascript can get you into trouble with a search engine.
Because a site is nothing more than a text document to a bot, using Javascript without careful implementation may result in many links that search engines never discover.  It won’t get you penalized, or banned, but you may be making some of the most important aspects of your site’s relevance out of reach of the spiders to discover.  Make sure that any Javascript links on a page are duplicated in standard HTML somewhere else on the same page, and you can avoid this problem.

10. Concentrate on keyword density for single words, rather than multiple word search terms.
If you use a search engine, do you type “game”, or “role playing game”, or even “the top rated role playing game of all time”?  Obviously, a single word is much to vague to be of much use, while the more detail you give the search engine to work with, the better it will be able to provide the results you want.  Design your site, including the keyword phrases it uses for relevance, around a phrase or phrases that accurately and exactly describe the content of the page(s) in question.  A single word is fantastic to look up a dictionary definition, but search engines refer you to dictionaries, they don’t mimic them, and even then you wouldn’t type “history” as the search, but instead would use “define history” or even “definition of history”, and if you wanted to be really specific, you could use “Webster definition of history”.

11. Your traffic will depend on how well you use one or two keyword phrases.
Does anyone actually believe this?  There is no possible way you can know what phrase a potential visitor will enter into a search engine to discover your site.  Use as many phrases as you can think of that will apply to the content of your site.  For one thing, most individual pages will contain information that is relevant to different phrases.  It is much more important that you avoid using phrases which have no merit, than that you concentrate on a single phrase. If “skateboard parks” has nothing to do with the content of your site, don’t use it as a keyword. However, if  “computer networks”, “home PC repair” and “CD/DVD installation” are all related to your site, use them, as well as “computer repair”, “installing home networks”, and “onsite computer maintenance”.  The more options you make use of, the greater the traffic flow you can expect to get.

12. If your ranking drop, you either did something wrong, or someone at [Google/yahoo/other] is out to hurt your site.  You can check your site out for possible problems if your rank drops.  To be blunt, it will keep you busy for a while, and give you something to occupy your time.  But the truth is that there is no possible way to know why your site lost ranking, and there’s really nothing you can do to change that ranking.  Make sure that you have good, clean HTML coding, that you have relevant content, and that the keywords you have chosen are relevant to the site.  Beyond making sure you have created the best site you can for a human visitor, leave it alone and let time be the final judge of your success.  You cannot second guess a computer program that uses hundreds, maybe even millions, of variables to rate the site.

13. Any change that appears in your site ranking is permanent.  If that were the case, why did it change to begin with?  This statement really doesn’t require explanation. It’s ridiculous.

14. Concentrate on your main page. It’s where everyone will start out, and should reflect that.  People who arrive at your site did so because they were looking for specific information.  Search engines, once they know your site exists (through inbound links, usually), will index every page on the site that is linked to every other page.  Your main page should be accessible from every other page on the site, but it is not the absolute starting point for any visitor, let alone all of them.

15. If you can get a high PageRank in Google, you’ll be the top search result in searches also.  PageRank is one of many many factors used by Google.  You may not have a PageRank at all, and still be the top search result, or your site may be a PR 10 (the best PageRank Google puts on a site), and still be on page 27 of the search results.  There is not any single goal to achieve top ratings with a search engine, and trying to write your site with any single tactic as your main goal, except the goal of making the site attractive to human visitors, is quite possibly going to do more damage to the site than it is to provide positive results. 

In short, every one of these instances comes down to a single obvious point:  If your site is relevant and has quality content, it will attract visitors.  If you spend all of your creative talents to try and trick, fool, outsmart, and deceive search engines, you’ll end up with a site that can’t be found with any search query, and won’t be worth visiting by those few people who accidentally stumble on it by mistake.  Your ultimate goal, no matter what the focus of your site may be, is to gain more and more visitors who enjoy the site enough to tell others that they should visit it for themselves.  People, not computer programs, are your primary concern.  Once you have gained the respect and admiration of human vistors, your site’s ranking in search engines will rise.  There are no shortcuts, there are no tricks, and most importantly, you can’t outmaneuver a computer program that is beyond the means of a single person to comprehend in the first place.

Article written by SEOnotepad.com