The following are things that I have heard (and sometimes read) from people who don’t know about search engines or SEO. This is not to poke fun at people who do not understand SEO, as a majority of the world does not, but rather just to flesh out some myths and identify them as being just that.

1. You pay Google for first page results.
2. The most important search engine is MSN.
3. Ranking in the search engines has something to do with traffic.
4. The most relevant sites are always listed on the first or second page.
5. SEO is not important.
6. You must be very technically minded to understand and engage in SEO.
7. Ranking well in the search engines is about trickery and manipulation.
8. SEO is when someone adds keywords to your site.
9. SERPs exist in a vacuum.
10. The web designer who built your site already did it for you.

And it is this last point that I really wanted to discuss, as it is related to all the others. I have heard this time and time again from local companies, but then looking at their sites along with link popularity, I can tell them that: No. You may have paid for SEO services. And since they are not informed with regards to SEO, it is difficult to gauge whether or not it has actually been done, and done well.

I suggest to anyone that they educate themselves before paying for search engine optimization services, learn a little bit about how search engines work and the basics of how sites come to rank well. There are a number of questions you should ask an SEO consultant before hiring one, but I suggest going that one step further to learn the basics of search engine optimization and the workings of search engines in general.

Ranking well in the search engines can have a big impact on the growth of a company, and it is not something that should take lightly. Hiring an SEO consultant can also be rather expensive, so it should be hard to justify learning a bit about search engines so one can make an informed decision.