By Sandor Panton, Contributor
SEARCH ENGINE marketing is one of the best ways to get targeted traffic to a web site. Surfers use engines to find sites and links that they haven't already bookmarked, so the search engine marketing formula for the Webmaster is very straightforward - more rankings for popular keywords will mean more traffic to the site.
From unethical practices that were popular and effective once, but which no longer work, to simple untruths that have seemingly become established misconceptions, there are many myths surrounding the ways and means of getting a site to rank well in the engines.
Myth #1 You can submit your site to ten 'gazillion' engines and directories
There are bulk submission services and software that promise to list your site in thousands and sometimes millions of search engines and directories. Ultimately however, there are twenty or thirty engines, portals and directories that you should be seriously interested in having your site listed on, and of those, probably five or six of them will end up giving you 75% (or more) of your search traffic.
Myth #2 All you have to do is tweak the Meta tags of your pages
A few years ago, stuffing your site's description and keyword Meta tags with as many keywords as you could possibly dream up seemed to be a sure way to high search engine rankings. Not so any more. Almost all the major engines have responded by significantly reducing the relevance of sites' keyword and description Meta tags in arriving at their rankings. One major engine, Inktomi, still factors meta tags in its algorithm, but most of the other majors, including Alta Vista, Google and FAST, have either stopped offering meta tag support or never offered it in the first place.
Myth #3 My site looks good, so it should rank well
Not necessarily. There are many factors that are used by engines to rank sites and the design or layout of a site is not one of them. Search engine spiders can easily spider and index basic HTML pages; but the more complex the site gets with items such as flash links, image maps, java navigation bars and drop-down menu links, the less likely it is that they will be able to index the content and links properly.
Myth #4 You must resubmit your web site constantly
People sometimes do this because they think it will help them get better rankings. On the contrary, it could cause your site to be banned for spamming. You should only resubmit if you don't see your site at all in a specific engine. The major engines including Google, FAST and INKTOMI will revisit your site periodically (some more regularly than others) to index any new pages or content that may exist on your site, and reassess its ranking.
Myth #5 Once you achieve a good ranking, you're set
Search engines are changing their algorithms constantly, new sites (competition) are being launched and indexed daily, thus the onus is on you to monitor your rankings, observe your competition and do tweaking where necessary.
Keep these myths in mind when you begin to navigate the uncharted waters of search engines. They are bound to save you time and sometimes costly mistakes.
Sandor Panton is an Internet Specialist & Consultant. If you have any comment contact him at feedback@jamaica-gleaner.com. Unlocking the secrets of the Internet is a series brought to you by www.go-jamaica.com, the portal web site of the Jamaica Gleaner.
