The Tenacity of the SEO Myth

Myths start in one of two ways:

• Someone misinterprets something that was said, and determines that a totally illogical pattern must be observed. Thus we see things like the “leaking pagerank” myth - a totally illogical and rather absurd theory.
• A problem develops with the way search engines index pages, as they change their operational methods. SEO gurus quickly devise a solution, and begin publishing it about the time that the search engines remove the need for the solution. The solution continues to be broadcast by the unknowing, unthinking, or unscrupulous.

The SEO world is rife with myths, and no one has the courage really to stand up and declare them as such. There are two basic reasons for that, also:

• Greed - if they tell you it is not needed, they can’t charge you to do it. This is why many URL myths have hung on so long, many years past the point at which it was no longer an issue.
• Uncertainty - SEO is like driving a submarine with half the instruments non-functional and nothing but a 200 year old map for reference. You hope the remaining ones will tell you where the rocks are, but if they don’t, you pull out that 200 year old map in the remote hope that it will show you where they are before you hit them. Nobody knows for sure about some things, and accurate measurements are nearly impossible. So they don’t want to quit doing something just in case it did matter after all, and they don’t want to tell anyone else not to do it lest they are criticized.

Add to that the fact that SEO instruction is like feathers on the wind. You send out instructions and they cannot be recalled, even if the rules change the next week - and usually they do! So half of everybody out there is faithfully implementing old instructions.

What makes me maddest though, is when I go to a major website, and find that their SEO “guru” is not even a practicing professional - a good deal of the information they have there is so outdated that anyone following it would be wasting their time, if not actually harming themselves. We are talking MAJOR companies whom people think OUGHT to know, so they do what they say… everybody hollering not to has lower credibility.

I don’t think it is ever going to get better. But I do know we need to be on guard and make sure the information we are using is up to date, and actually promoted by someone who does this for a living, and not by someone who theorized wholesale.

We also need to remember the rules:

• People first.
• Accuracy, not manipulation.
• Common sense over speculation.