There are a lot of myths and misconceptions that swirl around the SEO industry. There are a lot of traps and pitfalls that you can fall into. As a professional SEO, I hear these wild optimization ideas tossed around all the time by clients and/or sales people.
I’ve decided to clear it all up and put to rest some of the search engine optimization myths and misconceptions that so often irritate me.
1. SEO is Hard…
Search Engine Optimization is often perceived as some kind of dark art that only a chosen few can ever hope to learn. It is true, SEO does have some complexities, but when you break it down to its basics it isn’t very hard. Many times it is just common sense.
The industry’s best SEO’s have a nice blend of knowledge, including at least a basic understanding of website structure & code, some search engine/traditional marketing experience, and some basic writing skills.
This may sound intimidating, but even if you don’t have one or any of these skills, you can still do SEO on some level. In fact, I discuss the misconception that most people have about the belief that they can’t do SEO in my SEO FAQ page.
2. SEO is a 1-Time Deal!
SEO involves a plethora of things and is most definitely not a 1-and-done deal. As I’ll allude to in the next point, good search engine optimization is a never-ending task.
3. SEO Doesn’t Take Very Long…
The fact is, once you commit yourself to an SEO program, the work never ends. There is always going to be constant tweaking, evaluation, additions, link building, etc. You could continue to do all this until the end of time, and you still wouldn’t be done. SEO is only done when you are satisfied with your results.
SEO campaigns can’t be adequately done (and shouldn’t be done) in any short amount of time. When the wrong expectations are set with a client it can sometimes get VERY tricky.
4. Rank is Everything!
Your site’s ranking in the SERPs is not the end-all-to-be-all. Keep telling yourself that, because it is important. Too many people get hung up on their rankings, and get take it way too seriously when that ranking drops 1 or 2 spots.
The important thing is that you work on the ranks for the “quality keywords” that are most relevant to your site and your goals. Nobody cares that you are ranked for “biggest and fattest pizza eater this side of the mississippi river”, because nobody is searching for it!
5. We’re #1 So Our SEO Must Be Good!
Just because your website is ranked #1 doesn’t mean your site is well-optimized. There could be any number of reasons why a search engine ranks your site highly, and as I stated in the last point you could be ranked #1 for a keyword that doesn’t really matter.
6. SEO is Only in the META Tags!
Optimizing your site doesn’t just involve editing your META Tags. It involves far more and requires a holistic approach that pulls all the big & small factors together.
META Tags have been widely abused by spammers, therefore search engines don’t value them nearly as much as they used too. Don’t omit them from your strategy as they can still be important, but don’t put all your eggs in the basket either.
7. Results Will Happen Quickly…
Results from your SEO campaign may very well happen quickly, or they take a long time to take effect. In fact, some SEO campaigns never yield any results at all. In a nutshell, be patient with you SEO, don’t try to do everything too quickly, and treat each campaign on a case-to-case basis.
8. Results Are Guaranteed!
Any company that tells you they can guarantee results and rankings is flat-out lying. The fact is, nobody knows the exact metrics and algorithms that search engines use (and nobody probably ever will), meaning if somebody says they do or tries to make some guarantee you should run for the hills!
9. SEO ROI is Easy to Measure…
Return on Investment (ROI) can be very difficult to measure with an SEO campaign. There are often a lot of grey areas in terms of on-site and off-site work, with no real easy way to track SEO-related conversions.
In my opinion, a good way to measure ROI for your SEO campaign is to clearly define your metrics at the outset of a campaign, and work closely with your SEO firm (our yourself) to define just how you wish to track and measure those metrics.
10. You Should Only Focus on Google…
Nowadays, Google is far and away the leader among search engines with about 70% of the market share; however it would be a huge mistake to omit the other search engines (Yahoo, MSN, Ask, etc.) from your strategy as many people DO still use them.
11. High Traffic Means Good SEO!
Just because your site gets a lot of traffic doesn’t mean your site is well-optimized. As I said earlier, there are many extraneous factors that go into rankings and even more that go into how your site gets traffic.
For example, you may be running PPC, you may have TV or Radio spots, or maybe you are running newspapers ads or doing e-mail newsletters. In fact, maybe your brand is already so widely recognizable that you don need SEO. There could be 100 different ways that you are getting traffic to your site, but SEO may not be one of them.
12. More Money Spent Means Better Rankings!
Many people think that if they simply spend more money on SEO, that they can buy better rankings? That may work in the PPC game, but it is not necessarily going to work in the SEO game.
It is true that with more money you can maybe guarantee that either a bigger firm will do your SEO work, or that more people will dedicated more hours towards your project. However, just because the money is spent you can’t guarantee that any of it will work, only that whoever you hire will do their due diligence on your project.
13. SEO & Web Design Don’t Mix…
This is a complete hoax. There are many pretty designs out there that aren’t SEO-friendly, and there are many SEO-friendly sites out there that are simply hideous.
The fact is, design and search engine optimization CAN and SHOULD mix. All that this requires is a little extra design consideration and/or a few more meetings with your design team to make sure that their pretty design fits good SEO standards.
14. Your Designer/Developer Should Know SEO…
This is another assumption that is often made. Just because your designer or developer can build the site, doesn’t mean they can build it with good SEO standards in mind. In fact, most designers and developers will admit to you up front that they have no idea where to start when optimizing your site.
15. You Can’t Use Flash in Your Design…
This is false. For those of you who have sites entirely or somewhat based in Flash, do not fear! You CAN keep you Flash and still get some SEO value out of them.
While search engines do have trouble reading Flash elements, there are things you can do, such as <noscript> tags, that will help provide supplemental content to the search engines to replace the Flash.
16. Higher Keyword Density Means Better Rankings!
If you site is high in keyword density, it doesn’t necessarily translate into better rankings. In fact, this is an area that is often over emphasized and overdone. If you stuff your site with keywords just to get a certain density percentage, it may be more likely that you will hurt your site’s rank.
A good way to go about it is to write text that flows naturally, that is valuable to the reader, and that does have instances of your target keyword but that also includes variations.
Sure, search engines like when phrases are used in close proximity together like “search engine,” but they also like to mix and match the terms together when they are used separately in different parts of a page, like “search” and “engine.”
17. SEO Only Involves the Homepage…
You shouldn’t just focus on optimizing your site’s homepage. Every page on your site has a chance to be ranked and found for a given search; therefore every page on your site should have its own unique optimization strategy.
18. SEO Only Involves On-Site Work…
Optimizing a site is definitely heavy with on-site work, but there are many things you can do to optimize your website (link building, social networking, etc.) that don’t involve editing a single piece of code on your site.
19. You Must Submit Your Site!
Actually, search engines by their very nature would rather crawl and find your site than have you tap them on the shoulder and say “I’m Here! Index Me!”
You DO NOT have to submit your site to search engines for them to find you. They can find you in many other ways (through links, etc).
20. Submitting to Directories Will Boost Rank!
Submitting your site to an industry-vertical or local directory is a great way to gain additional exposure, but do not expect your site to gain added ranking value based upon your directory submission alone.
Most directories do allow you to submit a link to your website, but these links don’t generally give you any value in the search engines as most use a “nofollow” attribute.
21. Lots of Links Means Higher Rankings!
This has sand-boxed more webmasters than probably anything on this list. Link schemes and link farms are running rampant online, and for a newbie I can see where it might be enticing to get involved. We’ve all seen the ads, with promises to “Get 1,000’s of links with just 1 submission!”
Don’t get tricked into participating in one of these crazy link schemes. Associating with such unruly characters can hurt your site’s rankings or even get you banned from the index. You are much better off trying to acquire quality links in a manual fashion on a one-at-a-time basis.
Remember, there is no “quick fix” for building links, and if it looks like a rat and smells like a rat, it’s probably a rat.
22. You Shouldn’t Link Out…
Many webmasters are afraid to link out to any other sites than their own; for fear that a user may never come back. By doing this, you could be depriving your users of the useful information they came to your site to find in the first place.
Linking to other sites will not hurt your rankings (unless it’s a link farm or some other malicious site). In fact, by linked to sites that provide useful information or industry-related tools or topics, you may enhance your site’s overall reputation and rank.
I believe that by linking to relevant sites, articles, and resources you make your site more attractive from a user-perspective and they will respect you for it. It is this respect and appreciation that will keep them coming back.
23. Link Building is Easy…
There is no easy way to go about link building. It is the hardest but most rewarding task any SEO will face. Getting other people to link to your site takes time, and often requires you to go directly to another webmaster and as (sometimes beg) them to link to you.
At some point, maybe your site’s reputation will have people knocking down your doors wanting to link to you, but initially it is a real grind. Just don’t lose hope, because it only takes a couple quality links to open the floodgates of traffic. It’s just up to you to find it and facilitate that relationship.
24. You Must Outsmart the Search Engines!
There is no need to outsmart the search engines. In fact by trying to be sneaky, you can really hurt your site’s rankings or even get it banned. Stick to white-hat SEO tactics and avoid the black-hat stuff and you should be in the clear!
The only people you need to worry about outsmarting are your competitors!
25. SEO is Dead and/or Dying!!
There is always the rumor floating around that SEO is dead. Well I’m here to tell you that as long as search engines exist, their will always be companies and websites trying to one-up each other for that #1 ranking. For this reason alone, SEO will be around for a while.
26. You’ve Found the Secret!!!
Nobody has the secret. If somebody tells you they have found the secret to search engine optimization then they are feeding your Marxist propaganda. You should immediately punch them in the face for insulting your intelligence!!!
Nobody (not even the employees of the major search engines) knows all the factors that go into the search engine algorithms. In fact, we probably never will?
Happy optimizing!
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