It seems that everyone and their dog have something to say about optimizing websites to rank highly for search engines. With the emergence of this knowledge over the last ten plus years, a number of myths and misconceptions about the dos and don’ts of SEO have also become commonplace.
Here we try to dispel the myths and explain the real story behind them.
Submitting Forms to Search Engines
In the late 1990's search engines had ‘submission’ forms, where webmasters would effectively tell the search engine that their site existed. After submitting the form, the engine’s algorithm would then crawl your site for information.
Because of the system’s openness to manipulation and the lack of reliability of webmasters submitting their forms, this process ended in 2001. The forms still exist, however the major search engines have all confirmed that they rarely use the submissions. In its place, search engines now rely on (respected) external sites linking to your website to determine how they should index you.
The only exception to this rule is if your site has been penalized by Google, you can submit a reconsideration request, after you have made the appropriate amendments.
Keyword Meta Tags
Back in the day, meta tags were absolutely key. They could dictate how high your page would appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This system was quickly abused by spam sites, and today only Yahoo! indexes from the meta keywords tag.
This does not mean that meta should be abandoned entirely. Although tags are out, the page’s meta descriptions are in. These short paragraphs (between 150 and 160 characters) are not only important for search engines; they are your opening line to your client. Keywords should be used intelligently for search but text should also compel the searcher to click on your site.
