» SEO Myth - SEO Rules Change All The Time

Have you heard that before? That the rules of SEO continuously change? That´s a bunch of nonsense. In most cases people think this because their knowledge of SEO is improving. They learn something new and then think that it’s something new in the way search engines determine the rankings. But all that it really means is that it is new to them.

Another reason that people think that SEO rules change all the time is because search engines change their algorithms sometimes. But what are search engines really doing? Changing their algorithms, or trying to improve their algorithms?

Obviously, there is no such thing as the perfect algorithm that will work for ever and doesn’t require any upgrading. Even if it is perfect when it is created, after a while people will find ways to bypass the algorithms to get unfair high rankings. (yes that is possible, but not smart to do as it is a very short term solution and often means as much, if not more, work as normal SEO).

What are the reasons to put a site high up there in the results?

• Information the searcher was actually searching for
• Products the searcher was actually searching for
• Services the searcher was actually searching for
• What ever the searcher is actually searching for

It really is as simple as that. Give the searchers what ever they´re searching for. The only way to be a successful search engine is to give the searcher what ever he´s searching for. The goal is always the same, no matter what upgrades or “changes” search engines make in their algorithms, the end goal remains.

So you build yourself a site that is actually what the searcher is searching for when using certain keywords and you´re set for high rankings, right?

Nope!

You also need to promote your website. All search engines give some kind of importance, each in their own way, to how much a website is being promoted. And it makes sense. Suppose there are 1000 sites doing the same thing, each in their own way of course. You can’t determine which 10 of those 1000 is going to be in the top10, just based on their content. Imagine,. the top 10 will have relevancy scores like: 99.998; 99.994; 99.979; 99.936; 99.924; 99.922; etc. There is no relevant difference between those scores. Non at all.

So what do you do as a search engine? You need something else to make a more relevant determination of what the differences are between those sites. A good way obviously is to check what other sites say about these sites and how many people actually bother to link to it. That gives you (the search engine) a much bigger variation in relevancy scores. Something useful.

So they use links. There are a couple of factors related to links, all of them have their importance. And over time search engines may choose to vary the importance of certain factors, even add new factors (not just to links of course, but also other factors) but those changes don’t change the SEO rules.

Implement the basic SEO rules (and when your SEO knowledge grows you will be able to be more detailed in this work) and you will have high rankings. Sure you have to do better than the competition, but that´s not a search engine or SEO rule, that´s life!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 26th, 2006 at 8:22 pm and is filed under myths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.