August 2nd, 2010
Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals: Common Myths and Misconceptions
When we’re first planning a new website with our clients and we’re discussing their objectives for their website, one of the things they invariably say to us is “I want to be number one on Google.” Thus, whether they know it or not, what they are looking for is search engine optimization (SEO): gaining high search result rankings in the keywords that their target audience is searching for. Now, search engine optimization is a big subject — way more than just one article can cover. So let’s start off by debunking some of the big myths and misconceptions about SEO out there.
Myth #1: It’s all about your pages’ meta tags.
What’s a meta tag? It’s a series of optional descriptive tags that you can put in your website’s code. Two commonly used meta tags are a “description” meta tag, and a “keywords” meta tag. Stuffing your meta tags with your target keywords is often thrown around as good SEO advice. However, this is completely useless. Years ago, Google and the other search engines used web page’s meta tags to help them rank their search results. However, people caught onto this and began stuffing their meta tags with huge lists of keywords to try and boost their rankings. Because of this abuse, the search engine companies eventually stopped paying attention to anything put inside a website’s meta tags at all.
Myth #2: You should submit your site to 500+ search engines in order to boost your rankings.
Some SEO companies will say something like this in their sales pitch to you. It sounds great, right? It’s also completely unnecessary. Why? Nowadays there’s only 3 big search engines out there: Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google is the 800-pound gorilla of the search engine industry, with 70% market share. Yahoo and Bing fight over the remaining 30% of market share. (Ask.com is a distant runner-up, with about 1–2% market share.) Any other search engine out there either licenses the technology from one of the companies above, or gets so little traffic that it’s statistically insignificant.
Myth #3: “We can guarantee you a #1 ranking in Google.”
This is perhaps the most insidious SEO myth out there. It sounds great, doesn’t it? The only problem is that no one can guarantee anything when it comes to search engine rankings. The search engine companies keep their ranking algorithms secret (and are constantly shifting them as well), in order to keep people and companies from “gaming the system” to manipulate the search results in their favor. So while you can build your website following best practices to increase your chances of favorable search result rankings, there is no magic potion to “guarantee #1 results.” If a company brags that they can guarantee you a certain ranking, they are lying.
Now what?
With these common myths debunked, you may be wondering if there’s anything you can do to improve your chances of high search rankings. Actually, there is quite a bit! Join us next month as we talk about some of the foundational principles of optimizing your website for the search engines. In the meantime, if you have any additional questions about search engine optimization, drop us a line and we’ll be glad to help.
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