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Website Myths Part 1



Steroids. . .that is a naughty word in the sports world. They come with big promises of huge gains that many athletes fall for. They want that prize so bad that they sacrifice their bodies, money and future for a promise that gives them the “quick, easy guarantee” of success. Many companies prey on this psychological predisposition that humans have. They play upon your need for safety, so they give you a guarantee, which is quite often the bait in the trap. People love guarantees because it is comfortable. It seems like a no lose situation, but that is the big trap and marketers are masters of laying the traps to get you. Lets apply this to websites and how website designers and hosts suck you in with empty promises of success on the Internet.


There are things that I hear over and over again that are purely geek-speak ways to confuse you, such as, guaranteeing you a top position in the search engines, permanent search engine positions, instant link popularity, guaranteed number of hits per month, meta tag or key words and the list goes on. In part one of this article, I’m going to go right down the list and hit as many of the myths as I can related to website promises. In part two I will illuminate how your site design might be sabotaging your effectiveness on the Internet.


Did you know that Google changes their search factors or signals, which are the criteria for finding you every few days? And the way they change it is a closely guarded secret, so that major players can’t exploit and dominate the world. If the parameters for website searches change every few days, and it is a closely guarded secret as to what they are doing, how do you think you can be guaranteed to have the top placement? You can’t, and this is how they get you. Even if they get you to the top for a few days, they have fulfilled their promise of getting you to the top and even that is up for question. There are thousands upon thousands of search engines, and “which search engine are you at the top” of is another question to ask. You may be at the top of “Brother Bob’s Basement Search Engine” and be invisible to the rest of the world! This is a complicated arena that really merits more discussion to understand.


The next thing that I hear a lot is on the subject of meta tags or meta key word tags. Some one tells you that you have to have meta tags in your site and that is the panacea to all evils. Meta tags worked about three years ago, the Paleolithic period of the internet. If the search engines detect that you are using meta tags now it can actually hurt your site, much like taking steroids would do to an athlete. Steroids detected and you are out of the game! Key word searches have to be done in paragraph form, and be pertinent to your site and subject matter.


Don’t you hate spam? Well search engines hate spam too and many website providers employ this and other techniques of artificial inflation of the search engines. Search engine spam is defined as, pages or sites deliberately created to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results. Search engines look for spam like micro sites, doorway pages, redirects, some forms of cloaking, and link farms. You can be kicked off the search engine if these spamming techniques are detected. Major search engines all have some sort of disclaimer informing you that they ultimately decide which Web pages will be included in their indexes. So you have to play by their rules or game over for your site!


Not all, but many Search Engine Optimization firms know how desperate people are to be at the top in regards search engines visibility. They feed on this desperation, so proceed with caution if you hear any of these myths. Follow good solid practices that help you achieve the long-term results. They will help you grow and attain stability of staying in the game.

Article Copyright 2007 Educate for Health, LLC and its licensors. All rights reserved.

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