A few weeks back, Stephan Spencer (one of my Art of SEO coauthors) authored a post for SearchEngineLand entitled 36 Myths that Won't Die But Need To. I certainly recommend checking out the post, but be warned of some highly contentious comments. The tweets and offline feedback were similarly up-in-arms and it's easy to understand why.
SEO is a field where reputation is a huge part of your ability to perform well. Because the search engines don't publish comprehensive guidelines (or even guidelines that cover 1/10th of the material necessary for good SEO work), businesses rely on the savvy of individual consultants, contractors and employees. If your boss reads Stephan's article and sees him contradicting advice that you've been giving for years, faith erodes and with it, job security. Luckily (or perhaps unluckily), there's probably 5-10 articles you can find on the web that support your side of the story, many from quality, trusted sources.
The lack of standards sucks. But, it's also the reason our industry is so exciting. New experiments & experiences can reveal critical data about search engine operations. The ability to become an expert is open to anyone with the skills and perseverance to see it through. But, no matter how hard you try, it's hard to overcome some of the persistent myths of the SEO field - I've been caught in plenty of them myself (and who knows, maybe still am today).
This post is going to look at some of those nagging, lingering falsehoods that continue to thwart good SEO efforts, specifically those that Stephan called out and faced strong resistance. As always, this is my opinion, based on my experience (see the moz disclaimer) except in cases where research and data exists, in which case it's my opinion that the research cited is good enough to warrant that opinion
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