Catalog of SEO Myths
It is really unfathomable all the wild and outlandish statements of SEO that are made on the Internet. I’ve compiled a list of the most common list of SEO myths that I could find anywhere on the Internet. I’m sure that there are others, so leave comments if I’ve missed any, mention it in the comments below. The list is somewhat categorical, based on the different kinds of SEO methods and techniques that are being used, or misused as the case might be. Most listings could fit into several SEO categories, so a chose the one I thought fit best.
Meta Keyword SEO Myths
- Just Put Up Meta Tags to Get Your Ranking
Meta tags are so mid-90’s… like, oh my gosh! OK, so their use was once the only thing that you had to do to get ranked… but that was 10 years ago. But wait, there’s more! Google, Yahoo! and MSN (the only 3 search engines I optimize for because of market penetration) all three view the meta tag information in different lights. Google appears to mostly ignore the meta tags, but does ding you if you don’t have them. MSN and Yahoo! appear to utilize the meta tags, but more for description displays in the SERP’s, rather than to boost rankings.
- Keywords in meta tags is optimization.
Optimizing keywords in meta tags is not SEO. It is a waste of time. It is mildly important to have relevant keywords in your meta tags, but not a priority.
- SEO is all about Meta keywords
As you’ll hear me say through out this SEO Myths page, SEO isn’t all about anything. There isn’t one single thing that SEO is all by itself. SEO is a whole lot of techniques mixed in. Part of Search Engine Optimization is taking meta tags into consideration, but meta tags aren’t SEO all by itself.
- It matters whether you have spaces or commas in your meta keyword tag, and you will be penalized for using the same word more than 3 times
Search engines tend to filter out things like commas into spaces, so it really doesn’t matter which you use. I don’t know of a hard and fast rule in SEO on using a keyword more than 3 times (or any number for that matter), but it would be wise to not saturate (keyword stuff) your meta tags, or the search engines might consider your site “spammy”
Keyword Density SEO Myths
- SEO is all about keyword density
Nope. I’ve hinted at this before. SEO is about conversions, and it takes numerous techniques to qualify as SEO. Keyword density used to be huge… but the Search Engines have gotten smarter.
- There is a perfect keyword density and if you could only get it right, your page would be #1 for that term.
Yes… if you have exactly 12.3756908% keyword density you will rank in a search engine. Of course there’s nothing to say if you’re going to rank high or low for this keyword in the search engine though. Search engines are getting smarter, and they have methods to determine if you are stuffing your site with keywords for their benefit, or if it’s genuine content. You’re 100% better off writing content for your visitors. The search engines use a number of technologies that will pick up your contents meaning and rank your pages for keywords that you might not even have on your page.
Site Design SEO Myths
- You never need to redesign you website
Search engine technologies are a moving target, and to keep up with things, the site must be redesigned occasionally to keep with with the search engines. Even a “new” site that was put together by a designer, may need to be modified by your SEO consultant. It is best to get the SEO consultant and the designer together before the site is built. Even if it is just for a consultation with the SEO guy, you can hire him outright later, but it will save you tons of money to have the initial design close to what current search engine technologies are looking for. But that said, once a site is built and the link structure is set… the only thing that should really be “tweeked” is the content, and a majority of that is just the addition of pages.
- Once my site is built, I don’t need to update it
I addressed part of this above, but the essence is that search engines look to see that your site is old and your content is fresh. So creating pages with updated information is a good thing.
- The really, really good SEO companies can get you top rankings without your having to make any changes to your site, because of their special “proprietary technology”…
That’s right they do have special SEO privelages … and I have some ocean front property in Colorado
SEO consultants don’t work for the search engines… they are independant consultants that have the same information as every other SEO consultant out there… which is a lot of educated guesses and hypothesis. Google doesn’t tell us what their algorithms do, but there are a lot of things that we can figure out. But no special “proprietary technology” Sorry!
- Every page must have exactly 250 words on it to be properly optimized.
Not true. Although a page that is longer in length has a better chance of being ranked for a more diverse set of keywords, there is no hard and fast rule about the exact number of words that needs to be included on a page to be optimized for the search engines.
- The home page of your site should be optimized for every possible relevant term.
Sure…. there are hundreds (if not thousands) of related and relevant keywords…. how are you supposed to get all those words on one page, and have it make sense… I mean, weren’t you just asking if you only needed 250 words on a page, and now you’re asking how to add thousands of keywords on a page and make sense
I think you’re starting to get the gist here about search engine optimization.
- Hiding outbound links will help me to rank better by keeping all my link popularity on my site
In theory this could be true. In reality though, search engines realize that you have to share your links with visitors to be an authority site (just by the nature of an authority site). The use of the “nofollow” attribute is definitely useful, but should be used carefully, in a well thought out plan.
Links SEO Myths
- SEO is all about Links
SEO isn’t all about anything. SEO is many techniques used in parallel to drive traffic to your site, and create sales conversions once they land on your site. Don’t get me wrong though… links are extremely important… in the top 5 most important SEO factors in my book.
- Google back links check is an accurate display of back links.
Nope. Google has a tendency to list only a few links. No one knows for certainty what the links are that they are displaying, but they appear to be a small subset of quality links that link to your site, but I’ve seen low-quality links back to a site show up, so no one really knows what Google is displaying for sure.
- I can rank really high by buying lot’s of links
As someone else on the net said “that’s not SEO, that’s bribary” and the truth is that even with a huge budget to buy a lot of links, that can hurt your ranking if the quality isn’t there, or if Google has determined that you bought a link from a link farm. Though buying links is a common SEO practice, it’s use and effectiveness is diminishing, because of Google’s awareness of paid one-way links that make a site look “unnatural” from their perspective.
- Links are king
As someone else on the net said: “We all know that there is no king in SEO, there is just an army of little factors that all combine to earn you money. We also all know that conversions are king” — Well put (help me find a reference to this remark)
- Exchanging links with everything and everyone even if it’s not related is a good thing.
STOP! This is SEO suicide…. make sure that the links that you exchange with are at least somewhat relevant to your site’s content, on a page by page basis even. If you can convince high PR sites to link with you that’s even better, but try to reduce the number of lower Page Rank sites that you initiate link exchanges because there appears to be a logarithmic scale with PR. so 1 PR 5 link might be worth, say, 10 or even 100 PR 4 links … it’s OK to accept a lower PR site, if the content meets your high quality standards, but only initiate link exchanges with higher PR sites.
- Free For All sites will greatly improve your rankings.
Nope. Google mostly ignores these sites, and I believe that the other search engines are doing the same.
- Linking to other sites (even if useful to your visitors) will have an adverse effect on rankings.
Never forget the human element. They are what create conversions (ie. $$$ ) . Remember - Human factor first, SEO second. So always SEO around the human element, and never, ever leave out a link that your visitors will find useful, just because you’re trying to squeeze out a little link juice.
Keyword SEO Myths
- SEO is all about keywords.
Nope. SEO is all about visitors that are willing to buy your stuff. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) reduces the dependence keywords, although they are still needed. Just don’t focus so much on it that it consumes your entire effort.
- SEO’s only need a limited selection of keywords for your website.
SEO’s need as much as they can get to work with. If you want to rank high and create an authority site, you need lots of targeted keywords, not just random keywords, unless your site is really broad, like a news site, but most sites fit within a niche or industry, and there are a large selection of targeted keywords that need to be utilized on your site, spread over many pages to get the search engines to begin to recognize your site as authoritative.
- Stuffing keywords into alt attributes helps your page to rank well
Nope. Alt tags are for alternative readers, like a screen reader that a blind person will use. You get bonus points for having relevant text in the alt tag attribute, but that’s about it. So do a blind user a favor, and put something relevant to your site in there that will genuinely help him/her navigate your page. They will thank you for it, and generate some extra word-of-mouth traffic for you.
- Keyword stuffed comments give your page “an edge”
Keyword stuffing is never beneficial from the point of view of the search engines. So don’t do it.
- You must always repeat phrases throughout your copy for top placement.
Nope. Google recognizes that certain phrases will occur naturally on a page a certain number of times, but if you exceed a threshold, they reduce your bonus points. In other words, well written copy will naturally include these phrases in most cases.
- You HAVE to include the keyphrases a certain number of times in order to rank high whether it sounds stupid or not.
yep it sounds stupid, so you should do it…. I should have put this is the “I’ll try not to laugh” section below. You need to write genuine content for your readers. They aren’t a search engine, and will bounce off your page if your site doesn’t make sense.
- You HAVE to put keyphrases in your headline in order for your page to rank high.
I’ve seen a few pages on page one without an H1 tag, so I’m guessing you know my take on this. I’m sure that it helps, but likely only if you’re using the heading structure in the manner that it was intended by its original SGML roots.
- Optimizing for generic words is a great idea.
No, it’s a horrible idea. My site here is about SEO (obviously) so why would I want to optimize for “strategy” or “marketing” they are too broad with too many meanings … which translates to more competition than I want to take on today… or tomorrow… or the day after that… or how about ever… focus your keywords to your site/industry, and you’ll be thousands of times more satisfied with your efforts.
Domain Related SEO Myths
- Multiple Domain Names Pointing to the Same Site Increase Rankings
Nope. Doorway domains won’t help your search engine rankings at all, and in fact the doorway domains are likely to be not included in the search engines at all, they the primary domain typically is uneffected.
- Multiple copies of my site helps rankings
Can you say “duplicate content”? These are mirror sites, and actually will degrade the quality of your search engine ranking.
- Doorway Domains are an effective way to improve your main site’s ranking for particular phrases.
Nope. See my “Multiple Domain Names Pointing to the Same…” answer above.
Search Engine Submission SEO Myths
- Submitting to the search engines is the way to get listed
Yeah…. about 10 years ago. Any more, submitting to the search engines is pointless. They will find your site and index it as it finds your site naturally. So the more links you have out in the web to your site, the easier and quicker your site will be found. I don’t even bother with search engine submissions, and haven’t for almost 10 years now.
- Resubmitting Your URL Repeatedly to Search Engines
No, no, no… don’t even submit it to the search engines. Once they crawl your site, it’s in there indexing system, and they will come back and keep track of your changes.
- Using automatic submissions to directories is a good idea.
Automatic submissions to directories (as opposed to search engines) is not a good idea. In fact, be careful of which directories you list with, as they can be a link farm in the eyes of the search engine. The only directory that I currently use is DMOZ.org, but it is manual submission only, and has become less reliable over time.
- Submit your site to Google when you add new content.
Nope. Leave Google alone. They are already fast at work on indexing your site. Especially if you use a Sitemap.xml file, you’ve told Google (and other search engines) how to properly index your site, and at what frequency.
On PageText SEO Myths
- Hidden text works.
Not unless you want to go against Google
Google’s discussion on hidden text on pages and basically outlines a great way to get removed from their search engine.
- Bolding or italicizing all keyword phrases in the <body> text will improve ranking for those phrases.
hmmm…. there is something to be said about bolding a few keywords for emphasis, and the search engines are known for giving credit for it, but to bold and italicize every last keyword is asking for trouble.
- Not Using < H1 > tags will prevent you from achieving top placement.
No. There are plenty of sites out there that haven’t even heard of H1 tags, and they are doing just fine in the rankings…. amazingly, some of them are flash sites that have no need for an H1 tag.
- Hidden text is a great way to increase your keyword density.
Hidden text is a great way to get removed from search engine result pages. See my answer a few questions up.
- Everything you put in a header tag is given more weight by the search engines.
Things in the header tag (H1) do have a *slight* advantage in the eyes of the search engines, but it still has to be relevant to the content on the page, otherwise the search engines look at you header tags as spam or being keyword stuffed.
- Images are bad for SEO
I would never give up images on my pages just for the sake of SEO…. Images should have a properly documented alt tag attribute to identify what the image is to the search engine (not keyword stuffed, just a brief description of the picture), and then use supporting text around the image. It is a matched set, image to content. But the image won’t degrade your rankings, and likely will keep your visitors amused or entertained and coming back for more
SEO Guarantee Myths
- SEO’s can guarantee number one ranking.
Sure…. and the Easter Bunny is in the back seat of my car! SEO’s can’t guarantee anything with a search engine, since they don’t own the search engine. There are some generally accepted practices of getting your web page listed though that increases your likely hood, but with Google touting over 200 elements in it’s algorithm that it uses to rank pages (all of them trade secrets) no one knows for sure how to get a page listed number one.
SEO Difficulty SEO Myths
- SEO is rocket science.
No. SEO is Search Engine Science
OK, all kidding aside, the techniques used for SEO are not rocket science, and are just a few well applied techniques of generally accepted search engine principles… wow, say that 10 times fast!
- SEO doesn’t take time.
Wrong! SEO takes a long time, both in terms of having an SEO consultant getting the work done and in terms of getting the search engines to crawl your site, and the sites of all your back linked sites, and get the analysis done to display your result.
- Search engine optimization is an exact science.
Nope. SEO is an mix of art, science, philosophy and luck. Some may argue that Google is run by a very specific computer algorithm, and as such search engine optimization is all science. I could agree on that basis, except that without any knowledge of what the algorithm is, turns it into an art. You apply your own philosophy of how the search engines work by applying the knowledge you (the SEO guy) have learned from other pages that you’ve optimized.
Search Engine SEO Myths
- Anyone can get a top ad placement in Google if they’re willing to pay enough to Google
Google doesn’t take paid listings, other than sponsored PPC listings.
- Putting a link to Google on your website will give your website a ranking boost in Google. Same thing for Yahoo, and MSN.
Nope. Urban myth. One that has persisted for almost a decade
- It’s a good idea to change your home page every day to inspire the spiders to visit more often, resulting in higher rankings
I should put this in the ridiculous sections below…. the answer is no, it’s not a good idea to change your homepage everyday, unless you are a blogger and blogging every day about some new idea, thing, or thought that you typically blog about… but don’t just change your title every day… the Google spiders might bite you
OK, maybe not, but they won’t visit you any more often.
- Clicking on your listing repeatedly will help improve your positioning in the SERPs.
Nope. They look at the IP and see that the person that wrote the webpage is also the one that is clicking on it… repeatedly…. can we say, remove page from results?
- PageRank is a measurement of where my page will rank
Nope. Page Rank is Larry Pages Google ranking measurement tool that analyzes a site, on a relative scale from 0 to 10. The higher your Page Rank, the more authoritative your site is. But not a measure of what page you will land on or which position on page 1 you will be on.
- Rankings are the only goal worth measuring
There are many things worth measuring… how about traffic flows… conversions…. sales?
Corporate SEO Myths
- “SEO is a function of IT”
SEO is a part of a lot of departments… legal, design, IT infrastructure, different department heads and managers that need to give feedback if the optimized page is still saying the right things to customers, and that the link exchange and link building efforts have the right messages.
- Site’s cannot achieve high rankings unless they hire an SEO company.
Not true. I would love your business, but the truth is that there is nothing that I am going to do that you can’t do in house. I may have extra knowledge that you don’t have, but they are things that you can learn and that your staff can be trained to do.
- You should hire an SEO company that calls you out of the blue while you’re eating dinner.
Sure…. I bet that they guarantee top rankings with their “proprietary technology” too! In short, don’t do it. You will regret it. Do your homework, check references, and get things in writing.
- “Buying guaranteed keywords” from a spam email is a good idea.
Nothing from a spam email is good. Trash the email. If you’re needing SEO, you are much more likely to get top rankings by initiating your own search for an SEO expert.
- If an SEM/SEO Company is the biggest, then they must be the best.
If an SEO company is the biggest, then they have a bigger corporate crack for you to fall into… they also likely have a system of SEO techniques and guidelines that they follow, without really looking at what is best for your situation. If you go to McDonalds, you know what you’re getting, and it’s the same for everyone. If you go to a family owned gourmet restaurant, they ask “how would you like that cooked? and serve it with your choice of 12 sides and custom trim the crust off your sons toast” So, think about the service you get from a small company, that may have more impact on your business because they are able to tailor their services to your needs.
Common SEO Myths
- “SEO is a single event”
SEO is a series of events over the life of the web page. It is a non-stop, constant series of events, that if was to cease to continue, would severely impact your business.
- Content is king
As someone else on line said ” - Nope conversions are.” I tend to agree with this statement. I’ve been preaching through this entire SEO Myth page that there is no king in SEO. There is no single event associated with SEO. But the whole purpose of SEO is conversions, so maybe online conversions are king.
- Automated optimisation software can get you ranking for competitive terms.
No. Competant SEO consultants do everything by hand. Why, you ask? Because the TOS of several of the search engines specifically exclude the use of automated tools to query their system. Besides of which, there’s very little that an automated tool could really do. There is no magic pill, or “Easy Button” that can be used to make your site suddenly on the top. It really does take some man-hours to make it happen.
- Flash is bad
No, it’s the absence of text and complete reliance on Flash that is bad. Update: Google wrote an article in June 2008 that indicates that they are now able to read the .swf files (flash files) and can index them into their search engine. I still stand that you will need relevant text content to help give the search engine a clue. I suspect though that there will be new techniques coming out in the following months on how to optimize flash files for search engine indexing….we’ll keep you posted when we find something more concrete on this SEO myth
- Database generated urls are bad
The major search engines are very good at indexing complex URL’s, however, stay away from session ids, as they are known to cause a few problems like being longer than what Google will parse out.
- The really good SEO companies can promise you #1 rankings on your best keyword phrases in the editorial listings cause they have ’special arrangements’ with the engines.
True. They can make the promise of #1 rankings … but they will fail to deliver. Or they will deliver a top ranking for “pink monkeys in tutu’s over St Paul Minnesota” - Do you really want your site to be associated with a pink tutu?
- Alexa data actually means anything.
In the larger scheme of things? no. It’s mostly a spitting contest, and a flexing of muscles, though if your have a high Alexa ranking site linking to yours, you might get excited, but don’t let it get to your head. It doesn’t mean as much as you might think.
- Your “site” ranks well for specific terms.
Let me just clarify this. Individual pages rank for terms and keywords, not entire sites. So if you were looking for “SEO expert in Grand Junction Colorado” you might only find one of your pages out of hundreds that rank well for that keyword phrase. Where as you might rank well for “monkey in pink tutu” if you used the strategy listed above.
“I’ll Try Not to Laugh” SEO Myths
- “People in our market don’t use search engines.”
Is there any way to make my eyes roll here? There are people that believe this, but in every case I’ve encountered they are wrong. Nearly everyone goes online for information about products and services. For the first time, I’m seeing people bypass the phone book and go directly to the search engines.
- “Our site doesn’t get a lot of visitors, so SEO wouldn’t work for us.”
As Oliver Platt said in Lake Placid - “That will be your own little secret now won’t it” - The reason you’re not getting traffic is because you’re not optimized in the eyes of a search engine….
- “Search Engine Optimization is a collection of tricks to fool search engines“.
No, whitehat SEO is a collection of techniques that are supported by the search engines to make a site easier to crawl and be understood by the search engines. Search engines such as Google, even blog about the do’s and don’ts of search engine optimization, to help get your search engines ranked well. If only they would tell us everything….
- You have to pay to have page 1 organic search listings in Google.
LMAO - sorry, I couldn’t help myself. There is no truth to this. If you believe this, please stop it now, as it is a rumor that was started (possibly with some truth at the time) at least 10 years ago. It is not true anymore, and anyone with patience, knowledge and persistence can get ranked number one.
- Visitors will overlook exceptionally repetitive and ridiculous-sounding copy because they understand it was only done for the engines.
Let’s thing about this… when you land on a meaningless page full of keywords in random order, do you stick around?
- Google rewards bad sites / spam and penalizes “honest SEO”
Nope. Just the opposite. honest SEO techniques get to the top and stay there. Spam site *might* get to the top… but once they get caught (you can report them manually), they’re done.
- Our pages don’t rank well because we didn’t pay the search engines for top placement.
There’s no place to pay, and no amount of money will get you there. It’s 100% automatic by robots and crawlers that use sophisticated algorithms to figure out who deserves to be on the top.
- Google owes you a #1 listing cause you followed all their rules.
Google doesn’t owe anyone anything. They are an enterprising spirit that became successful. You can do the same thing if you want, but it takes a lot of hard work to get to the top.
- Google is personally out to get you, and they are messing with your head because you experimented with invisible text.
You shouldn’t have played with the invisible text. You’re doomed now …. Only kidding. Google doesn’t have a “memory” of things like that, and they don’t have a way to “mess with your head”. They rank sites based on computer algorithms. It’s more fair than you can imagine.
Outdated SEO Myths
- The search engines can’t index dynamically generated sites.
And you shouldn’t step on a crack, or you’ll break you mothers back…just another wives tale… well, this one used to be true, some 10 or 15 years ago, but they can get through some of the toughest dynamically generated sites out there.
Competitor SEO Myths
- My competitors get away with spam techniques, so I can too
Yeah I tend to follow strangers off sheer cliffs too…. except in this case, when it would be search engine suicide…. sure, they may be doing well now, but they will get caught and the search engines will stop ranking them on results pages… if you know with 100% certainty what it is that they are doing to cheat the system, most of the search engines have a reporting system to report sites that aren’t following the guidelines.
PPC SEO Myths
- Buying Adwords will make your site drop in the organic listings
Nope - Adwords (PPC) and organic listings are two separate issues.
- Buying adwords will make your site climb in the organic listings
See above.
- My competitors outrank me because they spend more on Adwords.
See Above.
Internet Marketing SEO Myths
- More traffic always leads to sales
Only if you landing page is great, and your product is great too.
- Top rankings guarantee more sales.
You still have to have a great pitch and a great product/service to offer.
