It’s unfortunate that over the past few years many misconceptions about search engines and how they come to rank sites have emerged. Some of these have been extremely counter-productive for publishers, as bad advice has been followed with bad practice and failure has been the only result. Any good search engine optimisation company will advise publishers with the best current knowledge about how search engines decide which sites will appear on their results pages in mind. It’s worth noting that no one really knows the whole truth about how everything works. We’ve compiled a list of common misconceptions about search engines to help you recognize a myth when you hear one, and guide your content in the right direction for prosperity.

The Submission Process Mirage

You may well have noticed that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing feature submission forms. To the uninformed, these might seem like an easy way to get to the results pages. Sadly, this is not the case. While we’re not advising you to ignore them totally, you shouldn’t make the mistake of believing they’re the end of the process when it comes to search engine optimization.

As SEO services will advise you, submission forms used to be of value in the 1990s, but these days they count for little when it comes to getting your site up on the results pages. The fact is that the entire submission form process was abused to such an extent that search engines found they needed to search the internet and find everything out for themselves, without relying on forms to be accurate. Too many publishers featured keywords in forms deceptively. Whereas submitting a form would, in the past, lead a search engine to crawl your site and give you an advantage, today the search engines are crawling the web relentlessly and exhaustively, regardless of submission forms.

With this in mind, and the knowledge that submission forms have been publicly branded useless, it’s best to concentrate on SEO methods such as good link building strategies, search engine reputation management and social media marketing to get you to the top by making your site popular with users. That’s what search engines are looking for now, and in a sophisticated way that you can’t really escape.

The Notion That You Must Overfill Your Site with Keywords

Many publishers got carried away with this idea. Even some of those who wanted to retain good quality content found believed they had to fill their sites with keywords because others were doing it, and they wanted to remain competitive. The fact is that nowadays, search engines are wise to such methods of getting in through the back door when it comes to ranking on results pages. Search engines will now take into account the number of keywords with a view to punishing sites which overuse them. By including an unnecessary amount of keywords you could easily find your site languishing outside results.

Buying a Vast Amount of Links Will Benefit Your Site?

This is one misconception that’s very much alive in the modern world of SEO bad practice. No reputable search engine optimisation company will advise you to invest in bought links these days. As an SEO method, it’s never been proven to get results. And there is now evidence to suggest that search engines will view the sudden appearance of a great many links with suspicion. There are sites that have really fallen into a trap with this, as they continue to feel the need to spend regularly on links. It’s a much better idea to concentrate on good quality, useful links. Search engines these days want to see sites that are providing a useful service to users, and to this end you should feature links with those users in mind. That buying links will help your SEO is one of many myths that involve the idea of fooling the big names like Google. As a guiding principle, it’s probably best to give up on that idea before you start.

The ‘Spamming Works’ Myth

Are you ever surprised by how much spam still exists on the Internet? It seems like many publishers cling to the idea that it can somehow work to their benefit. Don’t be tempted by any spamming methods. Remember, search engines continue to search and destroy.

Focus on good, ‘white hat’ methods if you want to succeed, and don’t get caught out by misconceptions that anything else will help you.