By: Ryan Freeman
We’re back for part two of the list I began yesterday [link to first post], talking about our Top 5 Online Marketing Myths.
3. Search Engines Are Your Friend
Myth: Search engines are the best thing to happen to business owners – cancel all other advertising!
Background: Many business owners think that search engines exist to promote the interests of website owners by providing a steady stream of traffic. They view search engines as the saviour of small businesses – a reliable source of endless free business leads.
Fact: A search engine’s only responsibility is to the user – not the website owner. As above, search engines live and die on their ability to provide the most relevant results to a user, thereby creating loyalty and trust in the user. If the results are not relevant, the user might switch to a different engine (just ask Yahoo! how that works).
Best Practice: Enjoy the traffic you get from the search engines, and keep working to maintain or increase the flow of leads. Seek to diversify your traffic sources. Remember that a search engine has no loyalty or responsibility to you, so the moment your competitors position themselves as being more relevant, they will get your traffic. Don’t become complacent or you will lose market share – and the search engines will offer no sympathy or comfort.
4. Meta Tags Are The Secret Sauce
Myth: If I cram the right keywords into meta tags often enough into the pages of my site, I will rank higher in the search results.
Background: Like keyword density, this fable keeps hanging around, likely because it, too, offers a simple and easy solution to the complex problem of search rankings. A decade or more ago, search engines placed some weight on the values in the “keywords” and “description” meta tags on a Web page. The meta tags are not visible to users of the website, but provided some contextual information for the robots crawling the site. As you can imagine, this was quickly exploited – and quickly devalued.
Fact: Search engines ignore the “keywords” tag. So should you. Stuffing it full of off-topic, repeated permutations of your generic keywords won’t help you, but it might hurt if you’re flagged as a spammer. The “description” tag won’t help with rankings, but can certainly help attract clicks as this descriptive text is often used to form your listing in the search results.
Best Practice: Write short, inviting descriptions of two or three sentences, including the key phrases targeted so that your listing will appear more attractive to a search engine user. As with keyword density, if your software or search marketing consultant focus is on meta tags, it’s time to cut your losses and run.
5. A No. 1 Ranking Is The Key To Riches & Success
Myth: If I can rank number one for “lawyer,” my law firm will have customers lined up for eternity.
Background: It’s true that having a number-one ranking on a search engine will drive much more traffic than a lower ranking, but as search terms become increasingly longer, it’s more and more important to focus on ranking for specific and relevant terms, not just one-word generic queries. If you’re practicing real estate law, it won’t do you any good to have a stream of traffic looking for a good DUI attorney. Additionally, ranking for obscure terms is vanity if no one is searching for those phrases.
Fact: Keyword research is an essential first step in building a website. Before the design, before the content, you need to know what phrases are best for you to target. There are several free keyword research tools available online to help you build a suitable list.
Bonus Fact: No ethical search marketing firm will guarantee search engine rankings, simply because no one can guarantee the behaviour of a third party – in this case, the search engine. Often the firms that promote guaranteed rankings will also mandate that they get to select the keywords. This leads to money being wasted on irrelevant, low-competition keywords where ranking is more easily achieved but is of little value.
Best Practice: Research your targeted keyword phrases at the beginning of your project and continually expand and revise your list. Target more generic (but relevant!) terms on the top-level pages and more specific terms on sub-pages of your site. By siloing your content, you will paint a thematic picture for the search engines, rank for the appropriate terms and provide a better experience for the user – which leads to more conversions and a profitable business.
Truth be told, this topic could easily be expanded into a twenty-post series dealing with myth and misinformation, but it’s my hope that the points I’ve outlined here will help you avoid costly mistakes and the occasional snake oil salesman.
Got questions or disagreements? What are your favourite SEO myths? Post your responses in the comments below.
Ryan Freeman is a fifth-generation small business owner and the founder of Strider Inc., an online marketing firm providing SEO consulting and online marketing strategies for businesses and non-profit groups. You can contact Ryan through the Strider Inc. website, email or by phone at 800-314-8895.
2. Search Engines Are The Enemy
3. Search Engines Are Your Friend
How can they both be myths?
Simon,
The simple answer is that search engines are neither friend nor foe. They are a third party with their own economic interests. They do not exist to serve the interests of business owners.
A search engine’s priority is to serve the searcher.
What’s important for business owners is to understand where you fit into the ecosystem, without emotionally portraying the search engines as saviour or demon. By understanding what they want, you can position yourself to reap the benefits of what search engines can offer.
They are neither friend nor foe – it’s just business.
Ok, I have to speak up about the posts on this page.
1. Keywords
It is true that the engines no longer look at keywords. Ignoring these will actually NOT help you. The engines still use these to cross reference your content with your description and with your Title tags as well as H tags on the page. Still complete these and be exact in what you mark them as. No more than 10 key words/phrases.
2. Description
This past December Google gave the Meta Description a lot more relevance so again, same as #1… keep things uniform.
I must say that the statement saying that there are no guarantees re: google and #1 rankings is true. The longer, more defined key phrases will generate a more targeted audience and will also give you a much lower bounce rate. (Bounce rate: When someone comes to you page and doesn’t stay long enough to read anything).
Thanks for the Post!
Randy Comeau – CEO/SEO Guru
nuMantis Technology Solutions – Windsor, On, Canada
Randy,
Thanks for your comment.
To clarify, I didn’t say “keywords” were not important, I said search engines ignore the keywords meta tag, and have for some time. There is no benefit from popping a bunch of keywords into that tag, unlike 10 yrs ago.
On the other hand, selecting the right keywords for your site structure and content is critical.
I do have to say, though, that I love it when competitors use the meta keywords tag well, since it gives me the results of their keyword research and saves me a lot of time. (Of course, that’s if the site has been optimized by a competent professional. Most of the time it’s “amateur hour” with duplicate kw & description tags across the entire site, so that’s no help to anyone.)
great ideas. I always follow your ideas and apply them.