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10 Search Engine Marketing Myths Debunked
By Kalena Jordan (c) 2007

In this article, I'm going to try and debunk a few myths
floating around the Internet about what's required to get your
site visible in search engines. Here goes:

Myth 1 - You need to buy a domain with keywords in it

I'm sure you've seen them, domains like:
www.paris-hilton-pink-diamond-dog-collars.com. For some weird
reason, webmasters seem to think that they need to have a
keyword-stuffed domain to do well in the search engines, the
more hyphens the better. Well it just isn't true.

In fact, Google spam evangelist Matt Cutts is known for warning
against using over-stuffed keyword domains. If you have a look
at one of the last sentences of this post of his
(http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/dashes-vs-underscores/) he talks
about possibly attracting Google's attention with keyword-filled
domains and gives an (excessive) example. Could he be hinting
that using ultra-keyworded domains may trip a filter of some
kind? I think so.

Myth 2 - You need to submit your site to 1000 search engines and
directories

Ok, I don't know who started this silly rumor but it's NEVER
been true. Latest figures from Nielsen/NetRatings
(http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3626726) show
that over 95% of the search market share is dominated by the top
5 search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live Search, AOL and Ask.
As long as your site is found in these engines, you can rest
assured you've covered the main bases. Despite this, I still
get emails offering to submit my sites to the "most popular"
1000 search engines.

Myth 3 - You need to stuff keywords into as many areas of your
site as possible

I like to think this rumor was started by the same idiot who
started 1). It's correct that search engines actively seek to
match your site content with search queries, but stuffing the
same keywords over and over into your site code via visible or
invisible text DOES NOT automatically make your site relevant
for searches containing those keywords. It's more likely to
trip spam filters and earn your site a ranking suppression. In
fact, you might as well hold up a big red flag to Googlebot that
says "COME AND GET ME"

Myth 4 - Your site has to be flat HTML

Wrong again. A few years ago, search engines had difficulty
indexing sites that were built using dynamically-generated pages
or pages with multiple parameters in their URLs. So the
recommendation by SEO experts at the time was to use flat HTML
pages or convert existing pages into HTML and/or use mod_rewrite
to convert dynamic URLs into flat ones. However the search
engines have all become better at indexing dynamic site content
now and also provide a universal sitemap protocol
(http://www.sitemaps.org/) to enable webmasters to ensure all
their pages are submitted and indexed.

Myth 5 - You have to swap links with as many sites as possible

I'd like to strap whoever started this story to a couch and
make them watch re-runs of The Golden Girls for a whole year.
Because this is probably the most persistent and frustrating
myth there is about search engine marketing and it's one of my
pet peeves. I am bombarded daily with emails from webmasters who
tell me it's "...extremely valuable to swap links to boost
your Google PageRank" or who tell me I should form 3 way
reciprocal link partnerships because it "...will help boost the
link popularity of our sites in a way that is undetectable to
Google". Excuse my French, but that's Bollocks!

Reciprocal links are pretty much worthless for search engine
value these days. In-bound one way links from high quality sites
are much more valuable from a search engine relevancy
perspective. If you are going to seek out reciprocal links, for
heaven's sake, swap links with sites that offer related or
complementary content to yours! What's the point offering your
site visitors a link if it doesn't relate to what they are
seeking on your own site? Don't seek out links based on
perceived search engine value. Swap links because they offer
traffic to your site or valuable resources to visitors of your
own site. If you base your linking strategy on search engines
alone, you'll end up with a Free For All link farm that search
engine staff will mock as they slap a ranking penalty on it.

Myth 6 - You have to buy an existing domain to be successful

This myth started shortly after Google began "sandboxing" new
sites for a period of time before releasing them into the main
index. The phenomenon became known as the aging delay
(http://www.rightclickwebs.com/seo/google-aging.php). Webmasters
were stumped when they couldn't find their pages listed for any
keywords in Google for months at a time and when learning of the
sandbox effect, some decided that purchasing an existing domain
could help them avoid the sandbox altogether.

A similar rumor suggested that purchasing a domain with a high
Google PageRank would automatically transfer the PageRank and
traffic to any new site built on the existing domain. Neither of
these assumptions is true. Hindsight has shown us that the
sandbox does not actually exist (http://www.searchengineguide.com/
laycock/007705.html), merely that Google has become a little
more picky about which sites to feature in their main index
versus the supplemental index and older, better linked sites
have a better chance than brand new ones with no link reputation.

As for purchasing existing domains, this can actually backfire
on webmasters because Google's latest algorithm looks closely
at domain registration details and if a domain has changed hands
too many times or has had dodgy content in the past, it could
attract suppression filters until the newest version of the site
has built up some trust-rank.

Myth 7 - You only need to optimize your META Tags

Back in 1996 when I first began optimizing web sites, nobody
knew anything about SEO and so even slight changes to a web site
meant you could outrank your competitors. Simply optimizing the
title tag of a page could bring on a Top 5 position in the
SERPS. Adding keyword-rich META Description and META Keywords
tags too pretty much guaranteed you a top spot. Now it's a
completely different story. Most search engines don't even
support the META Keywords Tag anymore and Danny Sullivan
recently determined that Google's never supported it
(http://searchengineland.com/070905-194221.php).

You have to offer search engines more than optimized title and
META tags if you want your pages ranked highly for related
search queries. You need to optimize the copy on your pages,
reduce code bloat, provide a logical navigation structure, have
good link popularity, update your site regularly, have sticky
content and make sure your site code validates, amongst other
things. Despite this, many webmasters assume that if they add an
optimized title and META tag to every page, their job is done.
Not so! You've got to think bigger than that.

Myth 8 - Any traffic is good traffic

I received an email recently from an online ad agency that had
developed what they thought was a knockout SEO tool that they
wanted me to review. It was basically a membership site designed
to generate traffic via a voting and points system where you
earn points for visiting sites and receiving visitors from the
same network. As I explained to them, the concept merely builds
false traffic and fake link popularity, which goes against
practically everything in Google's webmaster guidelines. It is
also very open to manipulation and is, in my opinion, operating
on flawed logic.

This mutual optimization idea has been tried before. It doesn't
work because it only attracts the most aggressive clickers and
the whole thing turns into a competition between 2 or 3 lazy
webmasters who think traffic at any cost/quality is the way to
run an online business. It's not. Unqualified traffic that's
unlikely to convert to sales or sign-ups is only wasting
valuable bandwidth and hosting resources. Visitors that
disappear from your site a few seconds after they arrive skew
your site metrics and send a message to search engines that your
site is not worth visiting. You want traffic from qualified
leads, loyal repeat visitors and new visitors via highly
targeted search queries.

Myth 9 - If you're not found in Google, you're screwed

I said it recently and I'll say it again: Google is NOT the
Internet. There are plenty of ways to market your web site
online, so you shouldn't become discouraged if you can't seem
to crack good results in Google. I know of plenty of sites that
receive more referrals from Yahoo and MSN than Google and
that's the way they like it. Bento Yum (http://www.bentoyum.com/)
is proof that an e-commerce site doesn't need Google (or any of
the 4 main search engines) to survive. Owner Jennifer Laycock
has deliberately blocked search engine robots from the site to
prove (http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/010160.html)
that an online business can thrive via word of mouth and social
media buzz alone.

But even if you can't live without Google referrals, you need
to have back-up traffic channels in place. Never rely too
heavily on a single source for your traffic. What if something
happened tomorrow that stopped all your Google traffic? Would
your site survive? It should, if you're doing your job well.
Keep adding good content to your site, update and submit your
sitemaps regularly, seek out high quality back links and the
traffic will come.

Myth 10 - Search Engine Marketing is expensive

Not so. You can market a web site on a shoe-string budget or no
budget at all! You don't need to spend thousands on SEO
services or PPC advertising. Simply invest at least an hour per
day learning how to optimize your web site for better search
engine rankings, submitting it to relevant search engines and
directories, adding fresh content, building up backward links
and marketing it via social media networks such as Digg,
Facebook, Del.icio.us etc.

Not sure where to start? Visit webmaster forums, read search
marketing related blogs and sign up for related newsletters and
you will soon learn everything you need to know about marketing
your web site successfully.
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Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine
optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and
respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as
running a daily Search Engine Advice Column
(http://www.searchenginecollege.com/blog.htm), Kalena manages
Search Engine College (http://www.searchenginecollege.com/) - an
online training institution offering instructor-led short courses
and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization
and other Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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