Search Engine Marketing Myths
One of the questions we get asked is about myths in the field of SEO or Search Engine Marketing. Here are three of the most current SEO/SEM myths:
1. SEO is done once, then you sit back and enjoy the fruits forever.
Running a successful SEO campaign is not like launching a missile. It's more like driving a car. You see you're starting to veer to the shoulder, and you compensate. You make turns when necessary. When we explain upfront to a client that during a campaign, we're going to work, then observe, then work again if the results aren't what we want, most understand it, and it paves the way for a smooth relationship. Often, people think SEO is a two-party vacuum -- the client site and the engine. They don't typically realize that their competitors are also working hard, and that every time the client moves up a spot, someone else moves down -- and typically isn't too happy about it.
2. Flash (or AJAX, or any technique) is universally bad.
Upon starting a campaign, we're often greeted by some pretty hostile and defensive IT and design departments. They've read article after article about how a certain technique spells certain SEO death, and they assume we're going to preach the same doom-and-gloom sermon and tell them their techniques are forbidden. Certainly, we have our coding preferences, but we're not here to dictate look, feel, or overall visual design. Instead, we work very hard to suggest changes to supplement existing site techniques, not replace them. We study all sorts of sites, and we can cite examples of Flash pages that lead their industry with almost no text on the page. So balance is critical. What you lack with one SEO factor you need to make up with others.
3. Search engines love blogs.
This really isn't a myth as much as it is a misapplication of cause and effect. What search engines love is content in its best forms: unique, frequently updated, easy to link to (and from), and easy to access from the root domain. It's merely a coincidence that most blogging platforms meet many of these criteria with minimal tweaking. To say that certain content performs better than other content because it's on a blog is like saying that certain people have lower blood pressure than other people because they frequently park near the fitness center. This misses the bigger picture. Search engines loved news sites long before blogs became popular, because well optimized news sites have the same characteristics. The difference today is that content platforms enable this type of site much more readily than they did 10 or even 5 years ago.