iMedia Connection, Associate Editor Michael Estrin has pulled together a must read SEO article with contributions from SEO Superstars, Kevin Ryan, Paul Bruemmer, Danny Sullivan, Aaron Wall, Shimon Sandler, and Google’s Adam Lasnik. The article reviews what I think everyone would agree are the most widely believed myths as well as the most important considerations in SEO. Here’s the list:
Myth #1: SEO is all about secret tactics (Come on guys! Job security! shhh! Hey everyone, yes it is, very mystical. Seriously, the real problem is businesses either think it is only the web developers’ or Marketing’s responsibility, fostering this believe that there is some magical art that only “they” know. Don’t be daft, SEO is everyone’s job.)
Myth #2: SEO means optimizing only for Google (please. Certainly not if you are in any industry other than a pure play website. Are you a local business?)
Myth #3: Submitting your site to thousands of directories helps
Myth #4: SEO is free (that doesn’t mean it should literally cost money! If you’ve read with me for some time you’d know I prefer in-house SEO to a consultant. Why? Simply put, see myth #6)
Myth #5: Keywords need to appear everywhere
Myth #6: SEO is a one-time event for a website (set it and…)
Myth #7: SEO will take years to return results (how this has perpetuated is beyond me; let’s see, the internet is how old? And new websites dominate the media’s attention every few months or so… so how exactly could it take years to work?)
Myth #8: PageRank is the critical measure of a site’s success (PageRank is bunk but don’t discount the importance of popularity)
Myth #9: Accessibility doesn’t really matter (Couldn’t have said it better myself)
Myth #10: Google has an adversarial relationship with webmasters and publishers (Damn them! We should all just turn our websites off! Put them out of business!! Who’s with me?)
Michael covers a great variety of excellent topics through iMedia Connection including one of my favorite debates, the monetization of or advertising opportunity on social networks. Be sure to give his portfolio a read and get the full story on the top 10 SEO myths.
What greatly concerns me is myth number one. Although the terms “SEO” and “link building” are not familiar to everyone, it does not mean that you can count the number of people who are actually engaged in it professionally. Companies should know that having a link builder does not directly mean that other companies don’t have one.
[…] going to pick on Paul O’Brien’s SEO Myths post now. He starts off with: “SEO is all about secret […]