It is widely known in the marketing community that to have your business grow, you need to water your SEO garden just the right amount. You might even have to add certain supplements here and there.
However, you have to be wise and avoid certain SEO trends as they may be creating just a placebo effect, wasting your valuable time and not giving you much in return.
To help you understand which SEO trend to employ and which to leave behind, here is our list of the top 10 SEO myths.
Myth #1: Never Mind the Keywords
There is a growing sense nowadays that keywords are not as important in SEO anymore. While it is true, we have reached a certain type of saturation in throwing around certain words to convince the readers that our website content is relevant to them.
Keywords are still an important SEO tool, helping guide the user in their search for information.
Today, instead of overstating the obvious, you should simply use the keywords with a high search volume to direct you towards writing the demanded content and learning about your competition.
Myth #2: Backlinks, Backlinks, and More Backlinks
The idea behind including backlinks in your website content strategy is to prove to Google that your site is trending and that it deserves to be ranked higher in search results. Having your website backlinked on other sites is the same as someone going around praising you for your skills, and making you popular.
However, being praised based on merit and not through paying someone to throw your name around are two quite different things. Therefore, make sure you are playing it fair and using backlinks as just one of the SEO strategies combined with keyword research.
For example, since you are reading a text on SEO and you’re located in Boston, a backlink you might find relevant could be on SEO agencies in Boston.
Myth #3: Social Media Helps Your Ranking
Although this is not true, there is an indirect connection between your rankings and social media. This connection is not achieved through the number of likes and comments, but through your CTR (click-through rate) and brand recognition.
The social media traffic gained through regular engagement with your audience and an overall continual presence is what helps you build your brand recognition and loyalty. So don’t ghost this information.
Myth #4: PPC Ads Do Nothing for Your Ranking
Similarly to the role social media plays in your website’s ranking, Pay-Per-Click ads cannot help you directly. However, they can draw backlinks.
Therefore, investing in PPC ads can certainly pay off for your business as it will help other businesses notice you and hopefully get you backlinks. Keep in mind that you should still do this strategically.
Myth #5: SEO Is a One-off Job
If this were true, everything would be so much easier. Unfortunately, SEO requires constant maintenance and updating. And it shows no results overnight. It’s a long-term investment, but it pays off.
Although you might be tempted to forget all about SEO once you have set it all up, in just a few months this neglect of your website’s SEO will result in lower traffic.
Why?
First of all, if everyone else is taking regular care of their SEO, your business will be overrun by the competitors quite quickly. Secondly, your content will lose relevance with the ever-evolving trends, and along with it, your backlinks will die out.
SEO is an ever-lasting process, and that is why its results do not become visible after a couple of days. It takes time to build, and it also requires constant work if you want to stay relevant and up-to-date.
Myth #6: Penalty for Duplicate Content
If the same or similar content is found on the same website or more than one, you will not get penalized. Many believe they will, despite Google stating many times that duplicate content is actually not penalized.
Now, avoiding a penalty is one thing, while experiencing SEO issues due to duplicate content is another one. Duplicate content can cause unfriendly URLs to appear in search results, poor backlinks, etc.
If you want to make sure there isn’t any duplicate content found on your website, you can run a crawl and fix these issues before they harm your SEO.
Myth #7: Page Speed is Irrelevant
This one is tightly tied to the quality of the user experience. If your users are faced with waiting too long for your website page to load, you might quickly lose both their patience and interest.
Not paying attention to the page speed factor is as if you are willingly handing over your users to your competition.
Of course, this has everything to do with SEO, so don’t forget to count this factor in when tending to your website.
Myth #8: More Pages Equal Better Ranking
A website having more pages is no longer an indicator of it being worthy of a high ranking by Google.
Search engines no longer fall for quantity, but instead register the quality your content, to provide the users with relevant material and sources.
So, if your quality content is spread over a couple of pages, Google will be just fine with it.
Myth #9: Your Content Should Be 2,400 Words Long
Content length matters, but not really in the sense of quantity per se, but quantity allowing for the quality of the text. This means that it’s the topic and the objective of the page that determine the length.
Naturally, a broader topic will require more content to be covered properly. For example, posts on health tend to be longer than those on food due to their relevance and scope.
To stay on top of what is required, ask yourself if you have covered the topic fully enough for your reader to be satisfied with the information. If you’re not sure, you can always ask the readers if they’d like to hear more or less about it.
Myth #10: If You’re New, You’re Doomed
Many people today believe they have no chance of becoming successful in their business, as the market is already flooded with competition. Although there are more website owners today than ever before, you can still join the party and contribute to it with your business.
Despite your website being new, you can still rank well in the search results. Remember, quality over quantity (and age!). The size of your business and its age are not as important to Google as the relevancy of your content.
So, do thorough keyword research, offer quality content to your users, and you are good to go. An additional step would be choosing a niche topic to stand out and making use of specific keywords.
Conclusion
To keep your website ranking high, do not neglect SEO even after you have set it all up and achieved a good ranking.
The game never ends. You need to keep following the trends and update your content constantly to keep up with the competition and Google’s standards.
