The recent “SEO is/isn’t like rocket science” argument was one of the most shameful episodes in the history of an extremely arrogant industry. Most of the people who dispense “communal SEO wisdom” casually refer to absolute nonsense as if it were fact. Here’s a reverse grading system you can apply to any of your favorite SEO gurus.
The fewer points they earn by this system, the more likely they are either totally off their rocker or that they may actually know what they are talking about.
The more points your favorite SEO guru scores by this system, the more lies and nonsense you probably have to unlearn.
Easily Debunked SEO Myths Still Loved By Many
Google uses Latent Semantic Indexing - Tell you what. Get back to me when these three queries consistently show similar results for a period of 1 week or longer.
Google’s Toolbar PageRank values are useful - Well, they help us sort out the amateurs from the professionals. Anyone who celebrates, announces, or otherwise participates in the tracking of a Google PR update gets 2 additional points. Anyone who has written (in the last 12 months) a blog post, forum post, Web site article, book chapter, or magazine article that hints, suggests, implies, or explicitly states that anyone should be looking at Google’s Toolbar PR values for any reason gets 3 additional points.
Google’s Toolbar PageRank values represent (number of links / quality of links) - Same rules as for the previous Toolbar myth.
Link building is search engine optimization - Link building is link building. Search engine optimization is the art of designing or modifying Web pages to rank well in search engines.
Links are the most important factor in Google’s algorithm - That’s like saying roadside IEDs are the most effective weapon in the modern military arsenal. Just because many people prefer to use one specific strategy doesn’t mean it represents the most important factor in Google’s algorithm. You don’t know what the most important factors in Google’s algorithm are. Nor do I. One difference between me and most other SEOs is that I’ll never earn a point for believing this particular nonsense.
Popular Nonsense Still Being Shared By SEO Gurus
The main reason your pages “went Supplemental” is that you have duplicate content - Duplicate content is a problem. It’s just not the main reason most people’s pages fall into the Supplemental Index. The most likely reason we can point to, based on information provided by Googlers, is that Supplemental pages lack sufficient internal PageRank to be included in the Main Web Index. Note: Many high Toolbar PR pages are in the Supplemental Index, and many low Toolbar PR pages are in the Main Web Index.
PageRank can be hoarded, leaked, bled, or somehow lost or preserved - PageRank is an estimate of how likely any given page is to be found by someone’s randomly clicking on links. This nonsense about preserving PageRank was concocted by people who looked at very small models and shuffled links around a handful of pages. In reality, you have no idea of who is linking to your site, nor any idea of which links actually confer PageRank (or how much) to your pages. Furthermore, as Google admits more pages to its growing collection of pages that acquire PageRank, the average amount of starting PageRank continues to diminish. So even if you only link out in one place, your PageRank is shrinking all the time. Get over it.
The keywords meta tag is no longer useful - It’s still useful for Ask and Yahoo! How useful is another issue, but both search engines still index it (or they did when I last checked for this in 2006).
The robots meta tag is not useful since robots index, follow, and archive by default - Yes, but for the search engines that honor noodp and noydir it’s a good tag to have if you don’t want your search results listings to be influenced by stupid (editorially chosen) directory descriptions. There is no reason not to include a robots meta tag on a page, regardless of whether its content merely states the obvious.
The description meta tag has no effect on search engine optimization - Since some search engines will use your meta description, the mere visibility that description provides a page is important. Also, we know that Google will omit multiple unique pages from immediate search results if their meta descriptions are identical or similar. (Omitted Results are not the same as Supplemental Results.)
Doorway pages do not work any more - Doorway pages work as much now as they always have. Some doorway pages are better designed than other doorway pages. All doorway pages probably have a limited lifespan. They eventually get filtered, penalized, or whatever. But doorways continue to work. It’s just that using doorway pages entails considerable risk. I certainly don’t advise people to use them, but your mileage may vary.
It takes one to two years for most new domains to get past the sandbox effect or aging delay - This pernicious myth is based upon the assumption that most new sites won’t get the trusted links they need to establish stability in Google’s search results. Only a lack of desire stands between any new site and that stability. As long as a new domain’s content won’t trip any filters or penalties, there is no reason to say it cannot rank highly within 1-2 months.
Google is now using phrase-based indexing - This is a new example of a class of nonsense theories that have been fooling the SEO community at least since the Hilltop and LocalRank papers were first mentioned in an SEO forum (we’re still waiting for Google to throw out search results based on IP address). When this query returns substantially different results from this query, maybe Google will be using phrase-based indexing. (”Substantially different” does not mean 1-3 results are in different places or that 1-3 results actually differ.)
Ineffective Methodologies Preached And Practiced By Many SEOs
Competitive analysis begins with backlink analysis - Backlinks should be about the last thing you look at in competitive analysis. In most search queries, you cannot identify the links that are helping pages rank. In fact, every SEO tool I have looked at over the past year that examines backlink data offers absolutely nothing useful for any sort of analysis, much less “competitive analysis”.
Queries are competitive if they return millions of raw hits - Unless you’re competing for 1-word terms, that is just absolute rubbish. Many people may believe that queries are competitive for this reason, but tell me who is competing for this popular sequence of terms? Remember that search engines are not yet treating unquoted query expressions as phrases.
Always put blogs on their own domains - Another variation is “always put blogs on your domain”. The fallacy behind this methodology is the assumption that you’ll lose link value if you build a successful blog on Wordpress or Blogger. But link value can be shared through links, so you actually stand to gain more link value by putting your blogs on Blogger and Wordpress rather than your own domains. However, the real advantage from putting blogs on large blog services is that they send random traffic to your blog. If you can get traffic through other sources, then the benefit of using Blogger or Wordpress is negligible.
Wikipedia is a good source of information - This really has nothing to do with search engine optimization but any faith placed in Wikipedia is an indication of some level of gullibility. There are smart people who hope to make Wikipedia a better resource. Unfortunately for them, there are smart, devious people numbering in the thousands — if not in the tens of thousands — who have made Wikipedia a great personal resource. Propaganda is not a useful resource, and Wikipedia is filled with bias and propaganda.
Participating in SEO contests makes you a better SEO - The idea is that participating in SEO contests is like competing in an athletic event. However, with athletics you have to train and prepare your body. With SEO contests, everyone pretty much throws links into the contest and virtually no actual search engine optimization is performed. So SEO contests only serve to reinforce the myth that links are the most important factor in Google’s algorithm (when in fact they are only the most important tactic in those SEOs’ methodologies).
Reading forum discussions and SEO blogs will help make you a better SEO - I read forum discussions and SEO blogs every day; I do feel I can learn a great deal from them. But does that make me a better SEO? I don’t think so. In fact, most people who learn their SEO techniques from Web forums and blogs are pretty much lousy SEOs, in my experience. Name any popular SEO forum today and I can pretty much tell you the SEO weaknesses and myths advocated by the admins and moderators of those forums. These are the “experts”, the leaders in the field, who often still spout at least some nonsense.
There are only three things that make you a better SEO: Experiment, evaluate, adjust.
Now, are there lies and half-truths that I tell? We should assume for the sake of discussion that I am probably wrong on several issues (however, I am most likely NOT wrong on any particular point in the above list — especially if anyone feels defensive enough to actually try to justify the nonsense). It therefore follows that I’m in no position to know which lies and half-truths I advocate since I still believe them.
I propose many ideas, many hypotheses. That is what good theory is structured on: expanding knowledge by proposing new ideas and testing those ideas. Naturally, many of my ideas will eventually be proven wrong. That’s not the same as saying that all the crap I outlined above actually has some merit. It’s crap. Nonsense. Worthless SEO gibberish that has been cooked up and rehashed through the years and passed around often enough that many people believe it without ever asking for any valid proofs to show that it has merit.
Every person practicing search engine optimization today achieves success through hard work, being flexible, and some amount of luck. After all, there are four factors that affect search engine results:
- What we do with our pages
- What other people do with their pages
- What the search engines do with the data they collect
- What people actually search for
We live and work in a quantum environment where we cannot accurately measure the state of any given page (what queries it is relevant to, what links pass value to it, which pages it links to that it should not, etc.). We just do not exercise enough control over the search results to always be right.
In this environment, people who insist you must preface every opinion with “I think” are missing the point: it’s nearly all opinion, and most likely nearly all our opinions are badly informed opinions. Hence, we cherish many myths, much nonsense, and we pass that crap around like cold and flu viruses being passed around a crowded school bus.
‘Nuff said.
{ 0 comments… add one now }
You must log in to post a comment.