SEO/Search Engine Optimization Myths

There are several myths that keep popping up in online discussion forums, the Usenet Newsgroups, and other places where people repeat these old saws as if they were reciting passages from the Bible. Among the most common myths about how the search engines rank websites are:

1. Meta tags are important for search engine ranking.
2. PageRank Doesn't Matter
3. Search engines (don't like)/(can't read) frames.
4. Search engines (don't like)/(can't read) Flash.
5. Search engines (don't like)/(can't read) Javascript.
6. Resubmitting a website will (improve/damage) its ranking.
7. Pay Per Click advertising will (improve/damage) your ranking.
8. Registering multiple domains will improve your ranking.
9. Hiding Keywords Can Improve Your Ranking.
10. Shared Hosting or Same Class 3 IP Block Will Damage Your Ranking

Myth #1: Meta Tags Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Once upon a time, <meta> tags were new ideas and only those very knowledgeable in HTML, the native language of most webpages, had an inkling of their existance or purpose. Until Google came along in the late 1990's, search engines commonly gave great weight to <meta> tags. However, as the Search Engine Optimization industry blossomed and started to stuff these tags with endless streams of keywords. Google realized this was a problem and chose to ignore them. Bing pays some attention to the keywords <meta> tag, and since Yahoo! uses Bing to power their search engine, it's worth making one as long as you keep it concise. Google will sometimes display the content of your 'description' <meta> tag if it contains elements of your search, and they may use it as an indicator of quality, but as I say, not explicitly for ranking purposes on a keyword basis. Also, the 'revisit', 'author', and 'rating' <meta> tags have no influence whatsoever on the search engines.

Use the 'description' <meta> tag to help attract users when your pages appear in the search results and the 'keywords' <meta> tag to help directories to categorize your site, but don't try to improve your rankings with them. It won't help. The only <meta> tags that have any direct influence on the search engines are the 'robots' <meta> tag (which is important when you need to prevent a page from being included in the search engines, or for preventing the links on a page from being followed), and the <meta> 'refresh' tag (which can be used as a substitute for a 301 redirect as a last resort).

Myth #2: PageRank Doesn't Matter

Mention PageRank in any search engine forum and you'll immediately be pounced on by anti-PageRank zealots, most of whom have very little knowledge of the subject. You can spot these armchair SEO's when they drone on knowingly about how the Toolbar PageRank display is months out of date and is, therefore, meaningless. Ignore them.

Know this: PageRank does matter. It matters a great deal. When the zealots say it's only one of many factors that Google uses for ranking, they neglect to point out that it's one of the most important factors in Google's ranking methods. They will spew forth examples of how a page with a lower PageRank score can outrank a page with a higher PageRank to bolster their mantra that PageRank is irrelevant. Chicken Little had better evidence that the sky was falling than these people have that PageRank is meaningless or irrelevant. For any set of pages that are relevant to the user's search query terms, their ranking positions in the search results are going to be highly influenced by their true PageRank score. You need to be aware of the influence of PageRank and make it a part of your search engine optimization efforts without obsessing over it. To learn how PageRank really works, see my page on What is PageRank?.

A corollary to this myth is that the Google Toolbar PageRank data is held back one update cycle and is therefore at least 3 months out of date when you see it. This is obviously and demonstrably false because new pages show positive PageRank scores in the first update cycle after they've been indexed. Again, feel free to ignore any self-proclaimed expert who spouts this cannard.

Myth #3: Search Engines (Don't Like)/(Can't Read) Frames

Rot! Utter Rot! If it was ever true, that time has long since passed. I've been studying search engines for over ten years now and I have yet to see one that was incapable of indexing frames-based websites or that penalized a site for using them. See my page on Search Engines and Frames. As you can tell, this myth makes me a little nuts because it persists by sheer momentum and in spite of patently obvious evidence as to its folly. Frames do cause problems for users, and search engines treat them a bit differently when it comes to displaying them in the search results, but using <frame>s or <iframe>s is not the kiss of death for a site. That said, I strongly recommend that you avoid using frames. The problems they create far outweigh any potential benefits and there are ample means of achieving the same functionality through other means.

Myth #4: Search engines (Don't Like)/(Can't Read) Flash/Shockwave files

There is some truth here. Most search engines do not read Flash files at all. Currently, the sole exception is Google. Google reads and indexes the text content in Flash files. It will even follow links in Flash files. Just keep in mind that the Flash files are treated as separate documents and the content is not generally considered to be a part of the parent HTML document. Google has recently improved its methods of indexing the content of Flash files, and they are experimenting with associating the content of the Flash file with the parent webpage, so they both have a better chance of appearing in the search results. And just like <frame>s, users can run into problems when they try to view Flash files that are intended to be embedded in an HTML document if the Flash file does not provide useful navigation to the rest of the website. Overall, you should always provide the search engines with an HTML version of any important content in your Flash files. There's an excellent post in Google's Webmaster Central blog on the Best Uses of Flash, which discusses how you can insure that your Flash files are handled properly by Google.

Myth #5: Search engines (Don't Like)/(Can't Read) JavaScript

Google reads and sometimes indexes JavaScript files (.js), and they can now simulate execution of JavaScript to a certain extent. The advent of AJAX means that JavaScript files are now more likely to include useful content, and Google loves content. But, except for AJAX, any text content embedded JavaScript is essentially ignored. While Google now crawls JavaScript files, they lack the semantic mark-up facilities of HTML files, and so can't be parsed for their most important keywords. So these files rarely rank for any non-unique search term unless you specify filetype:.js in your search query.

Myth #6: Resubmitting To Search Engines Hurts/Helps Your Rankings

There are days when I think I should be in the business of offering search engine submissions services. It's an amazing business to be in. It reminds me of how Tom and Ray Magliozzi from NPR's Car Talk once described Car Dealer Rustproofing. You can't see it. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. And except for the bill you got from the dealer, you have no evidence that he actually did anything. But resubmitting will not damage your rankings for one simple reason: if it did, malicious website owners would be constantly resubmitting their competitors' sites. The search engines go to great lengths to prevent one site from being able to damage another site's rankings, and this would be too easy. So don't let this myth keep you up at night.

Resubmitting will only help if your site or a page within your site has fallen out of the search engine's index. This is a rare event, but not unheard of. Resubmitting can also sometimes be helpful if you've updated an internal page that doesn't ordinarily get crawled very frequently. A submission will get the page in the crawl queue and there's a chance it will be updated faster. However, resubmitting your site will not help overcome a penalty that resulted in a complete ban. These days, you can usually get a recently-updated page re-crawled pretty fast by maintaining your XML Sitemap with accurate Last-Modification dates.

Summary: Let me be clear:
(a) There is no reliable method for getting your site into the search engine indexes except by using proper HTML coding and by making sure that at least one other well-ranked webpage links to your site.
(b) Resubmission has absolutely no effect on how your site ranks in the search engines. If your pages have good link popularity (ie. PageRank), and are updated with reasonable frequency, the search engines will revisit them to make sure they have the most up-to-date version of that page. You can use the search engines standard submission form to get your site revisited, and that can be helpful when certain situations arise that can only be corrected by having the page/site re-indexed, but it usually takes quite some time simply because of the volume of submissions that the search engines receive in addition to their normal craling schedule. It doesn't hurt to resubmit your site, my point is only that there are very limited circumstances in which it will do you any good, and it's certainly not something you need to do on an ongoing basis, much less pay someone to do it for you.

Myth #7: Pay Per Click Ads Affect Your Search Results

Here's a great myth because it works both ways. That is, I've seen people claim that the search engines manipulate the search results in order to get "relevant" sites to pay for advertising, and I've heard other people complain because their site didn't get good rankings despite the fact that they spent a lot of money on pay-per-click ads. Neither is true.

The truth is that the search engines' advertising programs have their own staff and their own issues that don't have any relation to the regular search results. Search results are a zero-sum game. No matter how you slice it, there are a finite number of top results for any search. If the search engines muddy up the natural search results with irrelevant pages, their traffic will go down - slowly, but surely as users stop trusting them to deliver quality results. And if they lose users, the search engines' own pay-per-click advertising revenues go down.

Similarly, the search engines do not pay attention to who's advertising on their sites with their Pay Per Click programs. So advertising your site through the search engines is not a shortcut to getting your site indexed or well-ranked. The surest path to indexing remains getting links from quality sites, and the PPC ads on those pages don't count as links. And if there was any truth to the myth that having search engine ads on your site increased your site's rankings, you'd be seeing a swath of AdSense ads on this page right now.

Myth #8: Multiple Domain Names Improve Your Rankings

Have you noticed that you don't hear lots of stories of people paying outrageous sums of money for domain names like "www.free-beer.com" anymore. There are several reasons for that, and one of them is that your domain name has very little effect on search engine ranking. Search engines do pay some attention to the Top Level Domain (TLD) like www.somesite.co.uk or www.somesite.co.jp to determine the relevance of your site to a local search - searches that are limited to pages based in a given country. There is some evidence that there is a small benefit in using keywords in file names, but not nearly so much for keywords in the domain name. And since having multiple domain names pointing to the same content can really damage your rankings, you want to be very careful in how you use them. You should only create multiple domains if you have a compelling marketing reason for doing so, and they should all have robust and unique content.

Myth #9: Long Lists of Hidden Keywords Can Improve Your Rankings

One of the oldest SEO tricks is hiding long lists of keywords in order to increase the frequency of those keywords on the page in a way that only the search engines will see them. It's a form of "keyword stuffing", which is prohibited by the search engines' guidelines and one of the surest ways to damage your rankings. The search engines are very good at detecting hidden text that is intended to fool them. Even the most sophisticated methods leave telltale signals that will get your site flagged for a manual review. That's right. The search engines employ teams of SPAM fighters who manually check webpages for violations of their guidelines. So don't even think about it.

Myth #10: Shared Hosting or Same Class 3 IP Address Block Will Damage Your Rankings

These are related, but obsolete ideas. Back in the misty past of search engines, it was common for SPAMmers to set up dozens of domains on a single server or IP address in order to game the search engines. But the search engines defeated this technique many years ago and so they don't need to rely on such unreliable methods of combatting SPAM. These days, shared hosting is so common that the search engines pay no attention to it.

I hope I've helped reduce the anxiety that you can face when you start to become aware of the power of search engines. Overall, your goal should be the same as theirs - to deliver a quality product or service to users. Good luck!

This SEO Tip by Rainbo Design was last updated on October 19, 2011