SEO’s lies and myths debunked

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Danny DeMichele

Search Engine Optimization has a lot of bad information being passed around. Some of it may have been true at one time or another, but you have stupid people regurgitating bad information and it makes the people who are doing good work look incompetent. Some of them have been created as a sales tool to scare people into doing business, some of them are simply ignorance. Here are some common ones that I heard from clients and other SEO’s all of the time:

Myth 1 – White Space in Code Will Hurt You - This is a great sales tool to scare you into believing an SEO knows what he is talking about. The white space in your code will not prevent a search engine from indexing your page. Come on now, Google can index and categorize billions and billions of pages…you don’t think they figured out how to ignore the white space on your page?

Myth 2. Google Changes Every month – Google does roll out small updates all of the time, but 99% of them never effect your business. I hear over and over again from other SEO Consultants / firms that you have to “stay on top of it” as every month the Google algorithm changes dramatically. Major changes occur 1-2 times a year tops, and most people are never effected in these either as long as they are doing SEO correctly.

Myth 3. Meta Keywords Help ranking - if some pitches to you that a meta keyword tag increases your likelihood of ranking, run for the hills. They are worthless.

Myth 4. Content is the most important - maybe for Usability, but for SEO rankings, Links outweigh content 10/1. I believe this is changing in the near future, but for now, as of the date of this post, Links are about the only thing that matters.

Myth 5. Unique Keyword Research Tools - most SEO’s will say they have some unique and crazy, custom built tool to identify keywords for your campaign. It’s B.S. They use the same tools you do. The Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and maybe Keyword Spy will give you all the information you need.

Myth 6. Google indexes Flash - I have been hearing this lately. Maybe they CAN index flash, but they are not ranking it worth a crap. Be like Steve Jobs and stay away from flash at all cost.

Myth 7. No follow links are worthless – This is crap and I have proven it over and over again. Google will decide a links relevance, and they do ignore no-follows. Google only cares about relevance and if a link from the home page of The New York Times has a no follow, I assure you it will provide a lot of SEO value. Sure, you might not see it in a back link report, but I assure you it is going to help.

Myth 8. Google Penalizes Duplicate Content - in most cases, you will not lose rankings because you have the same content as someone else. You may not get credit/rankings for content on your site if it is duplicate, but you are not going to get hurt or penalized for it. Think about how many people sell the same products online and all use the manufacturers description. You think they are going to get hurt for that?

Myth 9. Reverse Algorithms - I hear this a lot when I shop competitors. The pitch usually goes something like “We have reversed engineered Google” This is total crap. Google is a hell of a lot smarter than an SEO, and they are always one step ahead of manipulative tactics. Sure, there are things that can help your SEO campaign and linking campaigns that will give you a push, but there is no secret sauce that some consultant came up with that has beaten Google’s robust platform of determining the rank of a page. If they did, Yahoo would have hired them for a billion dollars.

Myth 10. Keyword Density Matters – I cannot believe this one is coming up again, it is likely some sales guy trying to close something. Keyword density is how many times a keyword shows up on your page versus all of the other words on it. If I had 100 words in a post, and I put in the word ‘SEO consultant” 4 times, it would be a 4% keyword density. This USED to count a lot, in fact, it was Alta Vista’s primary algo 12 years ago. It is not relevant anymore. Just make sure your content is relevant to the keyword topic you are trying to optimize for and you will be fine.

Let me know in the comment below or email me if you think I am incorrect. I am pretty sure I am nails on all of these, but am happy to keep an open mind.

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