Search Engine Optimization: For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Chapter 20. Ten Myths and Mistakes

In This Chapter

• Common mistakes made by site developers

• Harmful myths

• Problems that hurt your search engine rank

Alot of confusion exists in the search engine world; a lot of myths and a lot of mistakes. In this chapter, I quickly run through a few of the ideas and omissions that can hurt your search engine positions.

Myth: It's All about Meta Tags and Submissions

This is the most pervasive and harmful myth of all, held by many Web designers and developers. All you need, many believe, is to code your pages with the right meta tags — KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION, and things like REVISIT-AFTER and CLASSIFICATION — and then submit your site to the search engines. I know Web designers who tell their clients that they'll "handle" search engine optimization, and then follow nothing more than this procedure.

It's completely wrong for various reasons. Most meta tags aren't particularly important (see Chapter 6), if used by search engines at all. Without keywords in the page content, search engines won't index what you need them to index. (See Chapters 6 and 7.) Submitting to search engines doesn't mean they'll index your pages. (See Chapter 11.) Moreover, what about links? (See Chapters 14 through 16.)

Myth: Web Designers and Developers Understand Search Engines

I'm a geek. I've worked in software development for more than 25 years. I still work closely with software developers (these days mostly Web-software developers) and Web designers; I build Web sites for my ...