Myths about SEO

There are numerous definitions of the SEO on the internet, masses of articles and blog entries. This time we will though try to define what SEO is NOT, dealing with main misconceptions and myths in this area.

The first thing you hear about Search Engine Optimization is that it is a way of tricking search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO is trying to understand how search engines work and what people search for. So optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML to assist indexing activities of search engine but not to fool them. If anyone promises you first page results within a week, stay well away from them. No one can control search engines and searching algorithms take hundreds factors into consideration to determine the page ranking. I doubt anyone can trick all of them. Promise of miraculous quick results most likely means the use of the ‘black hat’ techniques which even if they work in the short term can bring more damage to your site in the long run.

In fact, some bad practices could cause the search engines to apply penalties to the site, which could bring a much lower ranking, or worse: the site could be banned from the search engine, and drop off the search results pages altogether.
Second biggest myth is that SEO is all about getting Meta tags and keywords correct. Unfortunately you can’t expect to rank well only because of this.
Amongst the SEO specialists there is a variety of opinions regarding relevance of the meta tags to the search engines. Some argue that meta tags are becoming (if not already) a thing of the past. Some time ago they were abused as a SEO criteria, so search engines changed their algorithm to reduce meta tags relevance in the ranking. They still have some value, especially description and keywords tags. The 'description' is what the search engines often display in their results pages.

Close to that lies another misconception of keyword density. Some believe that once you found right keywords you should stuff them as many times as possible in the tags, in the title, in the image descriptions etc. In fact, repeating your keywords too many times can be a pretty good indication to the search engine that you are trying to spam their search results. Also, don't waste your time including keywords that aren't used in the BODY section of your website, that could be seen as another spam technique. Providing informative and interesting content is the only way to include right keywords and be indexed by them.

Another myth is about having to submit your site to the search engine. No crawlers can find new sites without submitting them. They can, and submitting site will not change this process in any way.

Next one - that you have to submit special XML Sitemap. It is not necessary, but it is useful, especially if site has large number of pages, they have dynamic URLs or have specific content types, for example video (see previous blog) (add link). Also submitting sitemap is free and if a SEO agency is trying to charge you for this service – treat them with suspicion.

Also, that the page has to have min 400 words of content to be indexed. Not true – there is no required minimum, but more content means more information for users and spiders to crawl, providing that this information is meaningful and relevant for your product.

And the last one to mention today - is an advice: don’t make your site in Flash because it can not be seen by search engines. (see previous blog) (add link). It is not true. Google and Yahoo can now index text and links inside the Flash sites. It is also true that Flash sites need more optimization to be ranked well.