A strange title for an article perhaps, but there are remarkable similarities between the two. Here we intend to explore these similarities and some differences as well and provide a clearer perspective on what SEO is all about – or perhaps is not!
One glaring dis-similarity between SEO and religion is that with SEO we have indisputable proof that a god exists and that gods name is Google. Not only that of course, but there are several lesser gods like Yahoo, MSN and others. All these gods dictate the status of our sites on the glory scale according to our good deeds and also our sins.
It may also surprise some people to know that the Social Bookmarking sites like Digg are also gaining a religious following. They also have their own rules about how sites or articles will be rated in their system.
Just as religion is broken down into various sects or branches which all have their own variation of what they call the truth, the same exists for the gods of the search world. Religion calls their rules their dogmas. The search engines call theirs the almighty algorithm.
Oh no! Another dis-similarity. Religion is more than happy to give you access to their dogma so that you can follow it, build up good deeds and avoid sin. The search engines on the other hand are not. There is no more closely guarded secrets than the algorithms of the search engines and social bookmarking sites.
Now it is pretty common knowledge that there are some important good deeds that one must do in order to be considered a good webmaster and fall under grace with the search engines.
Such things as:-
1.Use a decent description in your meta tag
2.Make sure you use an applicable title in your head section
3.Use title tags, don't just make the font larger
4.Use bolded words to emphasize key words
5.Write for visitors and not for the search engines, in other words, naturally.
There are also some mortal sins that one can commit as well which may see you cast into the fiery pit of the supplementary index or de-indexed altogether. These are known as black hat methods and should be avoided at all costs. There have been hundreds of them over the years and the search engines have countered every one sooner or later. If you are building a site for longevity, then stay with proven white hat methods that will not end up getting you banned.
When preparing your site for SEO, ask yourself this question. Am I doing this to trick the search engines? The emphasis there is on the word trick. If the answer is yes, then forget it. It will not last and eventually cause you more pain than it is worth.
A classic example of this which you can see on many pages around the place that are trying to trick the search engines is where people have stuffed keywords at the foot of the index page in the same color text as the background, I.e. white on white. Are you serious? Do you really think that Google has a staff of thousands that read all these pages? Absolutely not! Text readers crawl the web looking at these pages and it is clearly evident to them what is going on. Result – mortal sin recorded.
A major similarity between religion and SEO is that there are any number of churches you can follow. This is a major problem for many webmasters because for every opinion on one aspect of SEO, you will find a differing one from another SEO church. There are however good people around that are worth listening to and I have my favorites. It will be up to you to find yours. Just weigh up what you are told carefully.
I will recommend one source of information you should watch and that is Matt Cutts. Matt works for Google and whilst he does not speak on their behalf, one would like to think what is posted in his blog is coming from a knowledgeable source.
In summing up, there are considerable similarities between SEO and religion because of the variety of opinions. Just as some religious organizations can get you into trouble, so can some SEO advisors. Stick with the basics when doing your sites and read as much as you can in order to find one or two SEO bloggers you feel you can trust. Remember, it is your site that is at stake here, not the SEO advisors, so protect it as much as you can.
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