5 SEARCH ENGINE MYTHS DISPELLED

If you've got even a casual interest in search engine promotion, you're probably more than aware that there's a lot of information out there about how to get that elusive number 1 spot on Google. Alas, most of the information out there is either outdated, or just plain wrong.

This brief guide takes you through five of the most common misconceptions about the search engines and how they work. Actually most of these techniques did work at one time, but the search engines are far, far smarter these days...

1: "Having a links exchange page is a great idea"

You don't have to know much about search engines to know that having links coming into your website is one of the cornerstones of any search engine strategy. Often, getting a link from someone requires a reciprocal link. This has led to the popularity of the dreaded "links" page - where all of these reciprocal links are hoarded together.

Unfortunately, such pages are pretty easy for Google to spot for what they are. If your site has dozens of links to petfood suppliers, viagra merchants, hat hiring companies and canoeing instructors but you yourself sell shoes, then Google just won't take you seriously.

If you must give a reciprocal link in order to gain one from a trusted source, make sure that the link is given in the footer of the page, or within a page of content - perhaps in a news story.

Links that appear within the natural flow of content appeal to Google's sense that links - like content - should be natural and not just there for SEO purposes.

2: "It's all in the metatags..."

Metatags are bits of code hidden away in your web page. They are visible to the search engines, but not to the person reading the page (unless you "view source"). The idea behind metatags was to give the early search engines an idea of what the page was about. By putting your keywords into the metatags, the search engines wouldn't have to try to decipher the content of the page itself.

Guess what happened?

Yup. Every man, his dog and his dog's wife stuck 'Britney Spears Knickers' in the meta tags and watched as the traffic poured in.

Guess what happened next?

Yup. Those clever search engines started ignoring the meta keywords tag. (whisper it: There's actually still something in them - but that's for another day.)

3. "Mention your keywords a lot..."

Contrary to popular belief, mentioning your keywords a lot can actually harm your page's ranking.

The search engines have invested huge sums of money, and countless hours of linguistic expertise in creating ways to determine whether a page is written in 'natural language' or not.

People still repeat keywords a lot - you've probably come across a page that reads something like this:

Dave's great canoes are the best canoes to buy canoes online uk with canoes in the uk. Canoes.

Pretty obviously, everyone did this at one point. Which made for pretty poor results - for both the search engines and visitor.

By studying the frequency of words, the length of your sentences and the structure of your document, Google can have a pretty good idea of whether your page is written for humans to read rather than a machine. If it thinks that your page has just been written for it's benefit, rather than for people, it will ignore it at best - and penalise you at worst.

4. "'Submitting your site to 10,000 search engines' is a sure-fire winner"

Actually, there are nothing like 10,000 search engines - certainly not ones that people actually use. Something like 85-95% of all searches are provided by Yahoo, Google and MSN. Even sites such as AOL, Ask and Altavista actually use the search results provided by the big three.

If a company tells you that they'll submit you to this many "search engines," then they will be basically taking your cash and adding you to loads of rubbish sites that no-one uses.

5. "Pagerank tells you how good your site is"

That funky little green bar you might have seen if you've installed the Google toolbar gives you a very approximate idea of Google's rating of the page you're on.

Essentially a mathematical equation, Pagerank takes into account various factors such as the number of links a page has, it's age and so on. It does not tell you where your site will rank. If you search for almost any keyword, you will find pages with a Pagerank of 8 sitting under a Pagerank 2.

Google's rankings are based on relevancy and trust - and Pagerank is only a very small part of that picture.

Today's Moral

If you've hired an SEO company, and they've suggested any of the above then you're pretty much wasting your money. At best, it will have no effect on your site's rankings. At worst, it will kill your site. So talk to your website marketing company. If they won't tell you what they're up to, then run. If they're happy to tell you, but they tell you any of the above, then think very carefully about letting them anywhere near your wallet.

Notes and Queries...

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