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December 04, 2008
7 Common Misconceptions To SEO
Today, I wanted to review 7 long held SEO misconceptions and discuss the truths. In order to separate the SEO truths from traditional misconceptions or errors, you always must first examine the truth.
For example, if an expert is trying to determine a counterfeit $100 dollar bill from a real $100 bill, he only gains insight by examining the real bill first. You could examine many different counterfeit bills for a long time and never gain any ground at all. But once you know and understand the real government issued bill, then you can spot the false things much more quickly.
This first misconception is a major misconception.
Here it is...
Misconception 1. You are "at war" with the search engines to gain top visibility. Therefore you must learn to do sneaky tricks to outsmart their algorithm. Therefore you must learn ways to beat the search engine to gain top visibility in search results.
Have you heard this story before?
While this whole concept (probably created by some marketer years ago) cleverly appeals to a perhaps a somewhat carnal side of being "sneaky" or being able to beat the search engines at their own game by using "secrets" and "tricks."
Even though the pitch may appeal to some people, the only trouble is that the concept is 100% FALSE from beginning to end. Some of you may be disappointed to hear this because for years, you thought you were at war with the search engines.
Think a little bit more and let's separate marketing pitches from the real truth.
Truth 1: The truth is that you have never been at "war with the search engines." You are not required to "outsmart" or fool" the search engines at all to gain top visibility for your Web pages.
The only one you are truly competing with for visibility is your competitors, NOT the search engines. The whole idea that you must "beat" the search engines or "outsmart" the search engines is a completely false concept.
You never need to compete with any search engine. You never need to trick it or even try to "fool it" in order to get excellent visibility.
A search engine does not really care whether you rank number 1 or not. They are fine with it, so long as you are offering relevant content that is useful and satisfies the reason why the user searched. Obviously any search engine does not want junk showing up in the results.
The only competition you have now or you have ever had, or will ever have in the future is with other competitors pages, not the search engines.
Being "sneaky" may appeal to some emotionally in a marketing pitch. It may make you even feel like the service or the course or publication will ultimately "make you smarter" somehow. But people need to learn to distinguish truth from error and you'll be blowing far less money on e-books, tool sets and memberships that appeal to the emotion but are founded on untruths.
Many marketers come across with this anger or emotion in their messages using words that are planted to trigger your emotions.
You can be sneaky...
I am angry because...
I am so embarrassed by what happened...
You are going to learn a secret...
I am going to show you something exciting!
etc...
Don't let your emotions be exploited.
Learn to recognize a marketing mailer that is attempting to exploit your emotions. Recognize these types of messages. Separate them out from communications that offer advice based on truths. I'll do an article on this in the future.
Misconception 2: You must submit your Web site to the Search Engines, therefore you need to buy our services and we will submit your site to 30,000 search engines for only $29.95 per month. The misconception here is that a submission to a search engine is beneficial.
Truth 2: You are far better employing strategies that allow search engine robots to find your pages on their own (without submitting.) Any company that bases their whole concept of traffic or SEO on submitting does not understand how search engines work themselves. If you are using this type of service, save your money. There is no valid reason to be using a submission service for search engines. It is still being offered today widespread because there are always new people coming online to be exploited.
Misconception 3: If a Web site has been banned, the person must be an evil or unethical person.
Truth 3: Search Engine Workshops reject anything related to Spam or short cuts or tricks that are outside of the search engines guidelines, but we do not believe people are "always evil." Many people that get banned or penalized by the search engines, are not even aware of SEO best practices. The only thing they turn out to be guilty of in the end, is of never having had any real structured SEO skills training.
In other words they were listening to some bad advice or perhaps were not even aware that each search engine has guidelines.
In some cases it's their Webmaster that may have gotten their site banned. Every situation is different but ultimately it's far better to gain your skills sooner than later. It is not always about good and evil but there most definitely is always a story behind the story and it boils down to user intent.
Misconception 4: SEO is a nightmare to try and learn.
It is extremely important to measure each SEO influence and get each factor exactly right. Therefore you need to research how many characters go in a title tag, keyword density, keyword prominence, keyword placement, how many keywords can go in a Meta tag plus all of the other factors for each individual search engine. This concept is what people seem to talk about because it's what some people are selling, but it is also completely false.
Truth 4: Sure you can spend your days measuring these types of things, but chances are you will be burning out after a while and getting very few success stories. This is because there are for more important things to understand that have an extraordinary impact in the results. SEO influences all affect one another, plus each search engine grades on a curve based on each specific industry.
Any researcher that tells you he is giving you the latest criteria based on these old fashion units of measurement will not make much impact. These days you are looking for the big picture, not individual influences one at a time. We have seen cases where people spend hours working on one page, when they could have dozens of pages performing for them in minimal time with much less stress. Yes I mean all 100% white hat strategies too, because these are all that we teach our students.
Misconception 5: You need to spend hours tweaking your source code each month to keep those top ranking positions. Therefore you cannot possibly manage your own in house search marketing. False again.
Truth 5: There are advantages to having your SEO handled by a professional firm that has been structurally trained. But don't buy it if someone says they must continually "tweak your code" to keep you in top place. It is just not true.
Yes, you may want them creating fresh new content. Yes, you'll want continued practices if you're Blogging maybe for example. But if a page is ranking in top spot, leave it alone. If you do look at making changes, make sure you are grabbing a look at the entire search landscape for your industry.
Misconception 6: SEO is Dead. This myth makes a great attention grabbing article headline although in my opinion it has been a little bit over-used. If you've read it, it is completely false.
Truth 6: SEO is merely more competitive these days but SEO is far from being dead. SEO is alive and well! Traditional rank checking may be dead, but SEO is most alive.
Misconception 7: There is only one correct solution to solve a specific SEO challenge. If it is not "my way," then it is the wrong way. Needless to say this is also false.
Truth 7: For any specific SEO challenge there are often multiple solutions to choose from. In many cases there are alternative strategies that are all white hat and yet very solid solutions. Don't let anyone tell you that there is only one way. Every Web site is different with different challenges and you need to be equipped with the full range of solutions.
Posted by John at December 4, 2008 07:50 AM