Search Engine Myths
There is a fine line between marketing and the truth, myth and reality. What people believe about search engines is often not based in reality and propelled by over zealous website designers who feed off internet hype and misinformation.
Myth 1: Submitting my website to hundreds of search engines using automated software will a) get me listed on google, MSN and Yahoo 2) increases my ranking on search engines
You do not need to use any specialized software to submit your website to search engines. Automated software can in fact cause your site to get blacklisted. There are hundreds of directories and search engines but the major search engines bring the majority of the traffic, so focus on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
The vast majority of the time, it is better for your site to get crawled from another site that is already listed on a search engine's index.
Search engines use robots to crawl the web, jumping from one link to the other and indexing websites that it feels relevant. It does not list all websites and if your website has not be programmed to near XHTML standards, then your chances of being listed in Google's index are somewhat low.
if you do wish to submit your website for inclusion, go to
http://www.google.com.au/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
Myth 2: Link building is an effective way to increase my websites rankings on Google.
Although it is important to view link exchanges as part of doing business, mindless link building exchanges do not necessarily increase your websites ranking. There is absolutely no reason to exchange links with businesses that have no relationship with your own business and you may inadvertently linking to SPAM sites, pornographic sites, when the business that you have linked to, goes out of business and their domain gets bought by a less reputable business.
Inbound links are only one variable in search engine ranking and link building alone is not an effective way of bringing traffic to your website.
Link building should be approached from a holistic marketing perspective rather than as a silver bullet.
Myth 3: I get no.1 on Google for website designer Melbourne, website consultant Victoria, I must be beating all my competitors and getting heaps more traffic to my website.
When businessese first discover search engine optimisation, the first and primary goal is to achieve a website phrase term. Yes, it is simply glorious to beat all your competitors for the prized term but the results may be as few as four extra visitors per month.
Looking at many website statistics, the distribution for search engine traffic, is broad and customers do significantly better aiming for multiple terms than focussing on a handful of terms.
Ultimately, the aim of search engine optimisation is to convert visitors to enquiries to sales. And many businesses become so tunnel visioned by getting no.1 on Google, that they fail to invest in website content that will persuade, inform, empower, educate or inspire. As a consequence, their efforts result in visitors staying on their website for 30 seconds, instead of 30 minutes.
Myth 4: I need to host my website in my own country to be listed in Google, MSN or Yahoo local search.
Provided that you own a .second level domain name in your home country. eg. com.au , .org.au or .net.au for Australian businesses and organisations - it does not matter where you host your website.
BUT if you own a top level domain name, eg. .com, .net, .org domain name, and you want to appear in your home country's (local) search results, you must host the website in your home country.
Myth 5: Search engine ranking can be guaranteed and is permanent
Search engines constantly change their algorithms, and your competitors' websites are also in a constant state of change. No one can guarantee search engine placement. You can adjust the variables that go into how a search engine ranks websites, to give yourself the best possible chance of doing well but you cannot be guaranteed that you will get that position or that the position gained will be permanent. Search engine optimisation is ongoing.
Myth 6: Tweaking title tags, metatags and keywords will get me top search engine placement for the terms I choose.
Search engine optimisation should never be an after thought - it is part of designing or redesigning a website to incorporate search engine optimisation strategies into the design and development of the site. If it was that easy to get search engine rankings, search engines would produce irrelevant results and no-one would use them.
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