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Is Search Engine Optimization Legitimate?

earch Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term for modifying your HTML pages to be as friendly as possible to a search engine spider, making them easy for a robot to interpret. The goal is to get a search engine to display your pages near the top of any results listing where it will be easily found by a user.

A search engine spider will evaluate your pages for a large number of different possible problem areas and will lower each page's rank value for each occurence of one of these problems. The kinds of problems a spider looks for are things like broken links, whether the title, description and keywords match the page content, spamming or overuse of keywords in the page content, text that is duplicated on another page or so nearly identical as to make little difference, and so many more that just guessing what they all are is nearly impossible. If too many problems are encountered, the spider simply will not rank that page at all, and it will appear on search engines like Google as a "supplemental result" with no chance at all of ever appearing high in a results listing. The rank value from spidering is then further modified by other external factors such as how many pages on other sites link to the page. This overall page rank is then used in comparison with the page ranks of other pages in a results listing to determine where in the listing your page will appear. A high overall ranking will put your page near the top of a listing, while a comparatively low ranking will put your page near the bottom. If your page is near the bottom of a listing with tens or hundreds of thousands of results, it will obviously never be seen.

SEO experts can be found in herds on the internet like gazelles at a watering hole, and they all claim to be able to modify your pages and use other tricks to bring your site near the top of any relevant search engine listing. While this may sound as good as a bridge in Brooklyn that just happens to be for sale, there are a few fundamental problems with this claim that should be considered before you hire any SEO expert for advice.

For example, claiming that you can bring everyone to the top of any relevant listing is simply not logical. If everybody was at the top of every listing, it would be pretty crowded up there. If SEO consultants say they can bring your pages near the top, a reasonable question to ask might be, "How near is near?" If you're a hundred feet up a ten thousand foot mountain, you could be said to be "near the top" compared to someone who hasn't even started yet, but you've still got 99% of the mountain above you.

Another important consideration is the fact that Google and other search engine companies do not publish their algorithms, and their programming employees sign non-disclosure agreements. The only people who actually know how Google works are Google employees, and they're not talking. There is no way anyone can know all the criteria Google uses to arrive at its overall ranking for a page, any more than anyone can know what someone else is thinking. There are certain things you can deduce from looking at listings for different search terms, but these aren't facts, they're just logical conclusions based on results. If SEO consultants suggest modifications to your pages or other external tricks, a reasonable question to ask might be, "How did you arrive at this conclusion?" If it is based on information published by Google or on logical deductions from research, that's fine; but if it's guesswork, then you probably need to know whether there is a solid foundation for such guesses.

While Google does not publish its actual algorithms for obvious reasons, they do publish a set of guidelines to help make your pages friendly to their spiders as well as things to not do that will alienate their spiders. These suggestions can be trusted because they come from the source, and they should be followed. They include things like not using more than a hundred links on a single page, making the title, description and keywords match the page content, not spamming keywords in your content, not having multiple pages in your site that are identical or nearly the same and avoiding dead or broken links. These guidelines can be found by clicking on "About Google" on the Google home page, and then looking through "Webmaster Central" on that page.

Other things to avoid are obvious tricks that try to "fool" Google like having every page in your site link to every other page in your site multiple times, or trying to make it look like you have more pages than you really do by duplicating pages or publishing pages that are nothing but links, or trying to make your site look like something it isn't or spamming keywords using hidden text where the text is the same color as the background. Google learned these tricks a long time ago and deducts from your rank when you try to use them. Also, while external links to your site are generally good, link farms are a bad idea. These are places where you add links to your site to another site's pages that are nothing but links to somewhere else. Search engines do not honor such sites, and links to your pages from these places will be discounted, ignored, or may even deduct from your overall rank. When you think of something to try and "fool" Google into giving you a higher listing, you should ask yourself, "Is this something that thousands of people have probably already thought of?" If the answer is yes, then it's a sure bet that Google thought of it too.

Having said all the above is not to suggest that all Search Engine Optimization is a shell game. Legitimate SEO consultants have read and absorbed the Terms of Service and guidelines published by major search engines, they have some experience in what works and what doesn't, and they have done the research on listings for various search terms to try and begin to comprehend the many implications of what they see, why pages are listed in a particular order, the URL for the listing, and the source of the listing and its content. When legitimate SEO consultants make suggestions, they can explain clearly what source or research led them to the conclusion, and they can point to concrete examples of when and why the suggestion has worked in the past.

There are many legitimate SEO consultants, and you can get a feel for the ones you talk to by first doing some of the research yourself. You can also read the Terms of Service and guidelines for major search engines and look through the listings for relevant search terms and think about what you see. If a prospective SEO advisor says something that directly contradicts what you've already read or seen for yourself, that's the time to ask why. A legitimate SEO consultant will make suggestions and talk about your site in ways that agree with what you've read and seen and may indeed have some novel approaches that experience you lack indicates will benefit your search engine results.

Search Engine Optimization is more of an art form than a science simply because, without inside information, figuring out how Google works just from what you see and what's published requires the deductive power of Sherlock Holmes. Legitimate SEO consultants know this and know that only the experience of experimenting and examining the results over months will begin to give hints about what works. When you don't know the algorithms you're trying to optimize for, experience and the diligent patience to have tried many tactics and analyzed the results are the key to credibility.

Because of its obscure nature and the vagueness of the term, the field of search engine optimization is open to con games by people who know little about search engines but are willing to tell you what sounds good or what they think you want to hear, but that doesn't mean it's a scam. There are legitimate SEO consultants who can help you improve the way search engines see your site, but you should do your own research to help you recognize credibility when you see it, and you shouldn't expect miracles. Small gains over time can add up to a large improvement.

David is a Perl and PHP programmer for web-based database applications. He is the programmer responsible for the functionality and interface design of IncredibleArticles.com.