» SEO Myth - SEO Doesn’t Work

This may sound strange but there are many people that believe that SEO doesn’t work. Webdesigners often seem to have this opinion for some reason. But that may simply be because many SEO consultants aren’t that happy with the work of webdesigners.

The reason for not being happy with webdesigner work is that it generally looks great, but is impossible to index for search engines. Sites in Flash are still pretty common for example while the last thing you would want for your website is to use flash only. Search engines simply can’t index the content of a flash file.

But there are many other creative ways to not allow search engines to find the pages of your website. Dynamic websites for example are often impossible for search engines, or search engines simply refuse to index your pages if their URL’s are long and full of variables.

Then there are still sites out there in frames. Often pages in frames do get indexed, but what gets indexed is the content of the frame, not the page as is presented to the visitor. So somebody that may actually be very interested in your website finds a content page of your website, but the menu and other links in the other frames won’t be shown. There goes your visitor, off to another website.

Another creative way to not allow search engines to index your pages is to put your menu in flash or javascript. Impossible for search engines to follow these links, they won’t find any of your pages. A simple site map would actually solve this problem parcially, but the real solution is a menu in CSS that visually will be similar or even the same as the flash or javascript file.

What many people forget is that most visitors want something from a website. If they want to admire beautiful graphics they will go to a museum or hang a poster on the wall. Graphics should always support the objectives of the website, not be the actual objective it self. (some exceptions may exist)

“SEO doesn’t work” people say when they can’t get a site to rank high. It’s kind of funny sometimes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 14th, 2006 at 6:28 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.