Once in awhile, there comes an E-Mail with a number of baffling recommendations that
warp even the most experienced SEO’s mind. I was dealing with one such client yesterday. As SEOs, it’s in our best interests to develop common methods of increasing rankings, while at the same time not limiting our practices in such a way that limits website versatility and website performance. It’s also in our best interests to ensure that myths and half truths like the below do not continue to manifest themselves as website improvements to help improve website performance in the SERPs.
Let’s get into some of these additional myths and downright fallacies shall we?
Multiple Domains = the incredibly amazing highly ranking website!
Recommendations: One of the best ways to boost SEO is to tie multiple keyword domains to one set of content. You have one main site and other do what is called a 301 redirect to that main site.
Wrong! This is not going to do much unless the 301 redirected domain name is already an authority site that will pass link juice to the main site. If you have domain names that have no value, and haven’t been worked on ever in terms of building an authoritative website presence in the first place, 301 redirecting them isn’t going to do jack for your rankings.
Changing the Meta Keywords tag helps increase rankings!!!
Recommendations: The individual proceeded to then provide recommendations on modifying the Meta Keywords tag and adding more keywords to an already comprehensive Meta Keywords tag anyway.
How does this myth continue to perpetuate when Google has officially confirmed its invalidity? Complete bunk. Google not only doesn’t put much weight on the Meta Keywords tag, they don’t count this tag at all. View the video by the leader of the Google search spam team, Matt Cutts, on this link: Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search at all, ever, zip, zilch, nada: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/keywords-meta-tag-in-web-search/
Oh, man, I love this one…
Atten-hut! Google can’t index images!!!
Recommendation: All of the items above would be better if they were actually text instead of images. Google cannot index Images and Alt tags do not have the same effect as a strictly CSS/JavaScript navigation system.
All the items above WERE text and have been text on this particular client’s website since the beginning. A recently-revamped layout even provided the client’s contact information in a much easier to view spot for better access! Shows how much they were paying attention! Regarding the scripts while that kind of modification will lead to some improvement, it’s not necessary to improve rankings. Where this will help is in reducing the size of the html file to nearly nothing, since how fast a page loads is a website ranking factor. With the company’s websites, though, we cannot modify code that was part of the initial building of the templates anyway. There has still been no problem getting them ranked high on Google.
And, if Google can’t index images then I wonder how all the images on images.google.com came about? Here are some tips on how to get Google to index images: http://webtalks.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-image-indexing.html
The correct terminology to use is that Google doesn’t recognize images while crawling the page, and they simply tend to show up as a blank space. This is where alternate text comes in – to help Google identify what is actually in the space where the image is supposed to be. The image file name in the referenced URL is really all that Google is going to see and keywords in the file name is what it uses to index the image (that and the alt text for the image).
BTW, one final aside: there is no such thing as an alt tag. It’s supposed to be referred to as the alternate text attribute of the image tag, since alternate text is an image tag attribute. But, then again we’re simply getting into semantics here.
Careful! A lump of coal in your stocking is in your future if you use white links!
Recommendation: The links use the color value #FFFFFF (white) this is very bad SEO wise as Google sees that value as trying to trick users so they do not index them. There is overuse of the (strong) (Bold) attribute within the body text. If you make these a CSS class of keyword it will serve you better.
There is nothing wrong with using white as the link color so long as the link color maintains appropriate contrast with the page background. The problem with using white comes into play when you use a white background as well, which constitutes invisible text, which can then be construed as tricking the user or raise a red flag as Google spam.
There was no overuse of the (strong) tag in the specific website that we’re discussing. In
fact, there is no conclusive evidence whatsoever that using CSS over the (strong) tag is better for SEO. It’s strictly a preference. Using CSS over markup to style text is a W3C valid method of coding. While it is a good idea and can be a fantastic thing for a website (I used to preach the gospel of the W3C myself for SEO purposes – just ask my co-workers!!), it is, at its simplest, a method of coding. Google doesn’t currently implement any kind of coding standards within its algorithm, and there is no conclusive evidence that utilizing W3C valid code increases rankings. In addition, Matt Cutts himself (again) provides his own viewpoint, that, while validation can be a good thing, currently the Google algorithm does not give any preference for any site that has valid code (only those who have a smaller file size – where this clean code can also come into play) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPBACTS-tyg
Quite honestly I am appalled that some of these recommendations have been made without researching them a bit further. It’s not rocket science – all the answers are on Google and doing a little digging can make your life a whole lot easier. If you’re going to go up against a professional SEO, at least make sure that 1. you’re also a professional, or 2. you are somewhat aware of the material that you’re discussing and how it will impact the specific website that will implement the recommendations, 3. you are familiar with basic terminology and how search engine ranking algorithms work.
It really doesn’t help clients to continue spreading false information and information without enough detail to help them make the appropriate, correct modifications that will result in better SERP performance. It continues to amaze me that even further information is provided to move the client into such a direction that will, at the very least, not even do anything for rankings. It’s important for any SEO to be diligent and understand everything that they are going to make a recommendation on so that they provide the appropriate recommendation and provide accurate information that will help the client accomplish their end goal: to help make money with their website.










