THS Articles

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing Myths

By Shari Thurow

Many advertising agencies, Web hosting companies, and design firms offer search engine marketing services for their customers. However, some of the methods they use to obtain top search engine positions are considered to be spam by the major search engines.

What exactly is search engine spam? Tim Mayer, VP of Web Search at Yahoo!, stated that, “We consider spam to be pages created deliberately to trick the search engine into offering inappropriate, redundant, or poor-quality search results.”

An example of inappropriate content is an adult site wants to be found on Google for the keyword phrase: Barney the Dinosaur. Affiliate websites often contain the same information as the parent site. It can be quite frustrating to view the same information delivered over and over and over again in search results.

Many unethical search engine marketers will take your money by making false promises without a moment’s hesitation. SEO sales reps may tell you exactly what you want to hear just to close the sale. Before hiring a search engine marketing firm, be alert for these search engine marketing myths before you sign.

Myth #1: Search engine marketing equals search engine advertising.
One of the most widespread beliefs about search engine marketing is that search engine advertising equals search marketing. For example, if an online marketing firm runs advertising campaigns on Google and Yahoo!, the firm must specialize in search engine marketing.

Search engine marketing encompasses a wide variety of skills. The primary forms of search engine marketing include:
• Search engine optimization
• Search engine advertising
• Web directory paid inclusion
• Search engine paid inclusion
• Vertical/specialized search services (news, shopping, travel, etc.)

The reason this myth is so widespread? Search engine marketing has recently become a hot new agency service. Unfortunately, many ad agencies have little or no search engine optimization skills. Writing keyword-rich text is a foreign concept to them. Juicy sales hype and buzzwords are the norm. Agency site designers are often more concerned with Flash sites or sites with “pizzazz” than with search friendliness.

Additionally, many new search engine advertising firms consist of former search engine employees. This group specializes in search advertising — not optimization, paid inclusion, or vertical search.
If you hire a full-service search engine marketing firm, make sure you hire one that truly has experience in all forms of search engine marketing. Don’t hire a firm that specializes in advertising when the service you need is search engine optimization.

Myth #2: Buying search engine advertising will improve your site’s rankings in the main search results.
This myth is based on an erroneous cause-and-effect occurrence. When people launch a new website, they often purchase search engine advertising. After checking to see how their ad appears, they notice that their site URLs appear in the search results. “Wow,” they think. “I bought ads and my website appears in the main search results.” Correct assumption?

No. Incorrect assumption. Purchasing Google AdWords will not make your site rank higher in the main search results. Purchasing Overture ads will not make your site rank higher in the Yahoo! results.