Schewanick Computer Services

Three Search Engine Placement Myths Debunked
By Affiliate HeadQuarters
Most webmasters jump on every "Search Engine Optimization Magic Bullet" that comes along. There is no magic bullet, so these attempts fail. The webmaster takes home a hard-learned lesson in search engine optimization, but they often come away with an optimization myth.
There are many tactics that can improve link popularity and boost search rankings, and there are just many tactics that can hurt and destroy months of hard work. This article focuses on debunking many of the myths (most of which are left over scare tactics from software producers) circulating on the Internet.
1. FFA Pages
Free For All pages are basically link farms. Many say that FFA Pages do more harm than good for your webpage; others say that that FFA Pages benefit only the people that own the pages. The truth is, neither of those claims are correct.
Posting to FFA Pages will not hurt your search engine ranking, nor will it increase it. Search engines do not like FFA Pages and they do not award points if they find your link on them, but they understand that anyone can post to them and claim to a representative of your site. In a nutshell, when a search engine finds your link on an FFA Page they treat the link as if it is not there at all, it is ignored. This prevents every webmaster from posting ads for their competition and knocking their competition out of the search engines. Posting to FFA Pages will not hurt you, however, linking to FFA Pages from your page (outbound links) will hurt you. This again is because search engines do not like FFA Pages. By not indexing pages that have links to FFA Pages, the search engines can keep those pages from being found, and prevent the FFA Pages from being used.
Owning an FFA Page allows webmasters to automatically send emails to people who post to their page. People use throw-away emails when posting to FFA Pages. The FFA Pages recommend using throw-away emails. So it is true that webmasters can send free email advertising their products by owning an FFA Page - but no one ever reads the emails.
Our recommendation: Avoid FFA Pages
2. Search Engine Submission
Many search engine submission services stress how important it is to submit your web site to the search engines every month. They even use scare tactics saying that submitting your web site without them can cause your website to become banned from the engine.
This is much like the FFA Pages, submitting your website a few times to a search engine will not hurt it. However some search engines like Yahoo! (which is actually a directory) review each submission with a human reviewer, a human reviewer may not be as forgiving as a script when they see you submitted the same page several hundred times.
Once you are indexed by a search engine there is no reason to submit again. Once your web site is in the index - it stays in. It may take a few weeks, or even months for search engines to index your entire page, but once they find one of your pages, they will eventually follow every link on it.
You do not need to be listed in 800,000 search engines. No one uses those little search engines, so why be in them? You can pay $40 for software that will submit your web site to thousands of search engines, but you really would be better off putting your money where your mouth is, at least you'd get some fiber.
Our recommendation: Submit to the top search engines by hand.
3. Doorway Pages
There are many questions about doorway pages, the primary one being, "What are doorway pages?" Doorway pages are hundreds, sometimes even thousands of pages designed to rank high in search engines. These pages redirect visitors (using meta refresh or javascript) to a different web site. The hope is that the doorway pages will get top rankings with search engines, get clicked and cause a redirection to your web site and increase traffic your traffic.
As long as doorway pages are used responsibly, they will aid in your marketing and promotion. Doorway pages should be related to the content on your web site doorway pages focused on Avril Lavigne linking to your site about Horse Shoe Crab Farming will be considered spam and may be rejected by search engines (once found). Doorway pages can get surprisingly high search engine rankings. Because doorway pages rank high, search engines consider them a quality web site, and because each page links to your web site, they can do wonders for your link popularity – increasing your search engine position.
You can find Door Page Generators for upwards of $99. That's insane. You can find quality doorway generators for free. Moreover, do yourself a favor, if you find someone charging $99 for a page generator make a mental note not do business with them.
Our recommendation: Use a FREE doorway page generator carefully.
Getting a high search engine ranking is time consuming, but rewarding work. Do not fret if after several months you are not in the top 10 websites for your desired keyword. Look at and aim for other keywords. Try to get strong link partners, avoid FFA Pages, submit to search engines, and use doorway pages.