In a perfect world, everyone would be honest.

In a perfect world, no one would violate search engine policies to try get a better listing.

They'd respect the terms set out by the search engines. It's not a perfect world. And especially not when it comes to the highly competitive search engine optimization industry. Prime example;

1) Here is a quote taken from a "search engine optimization" website;

"Sophisticated doorway pages (those that contain unique optimized text) are still an excellent way to rank with the search engines."

2) Here is a quote taken from Google's Webmaster Guide;

"Another illicit practice is to place "doorway" pages loaded with keywords on the client's site... The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant..."

When I was in the sandbox (and I don't mean the Google Sandbox) my mother taught me to be sure my information comes from the horse's mouth. That's still good advice today.

Which are lies and which are misconceptions?

Who knows? Did the SEO (search engine optimizer) actually read Google's Guidelines? Is it old advice that hasn't been updated for years?

The truth is, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that you need to know the guidelines because you will be the one to pay the price for anything done on your behalf. They are publicly posted for that reason. You should read these two;

http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and

http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

I am not an "SEO" - I do not offer SEO services. I'm a website designer that believes designers should understand search engines since they're creating the pages that search engines will be indexing. I know that if a search engine optimizer promises you good ranking and violates search engine policies to get them, it's your site that will be removed from Google. Not theirs. You need to know that, too.

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