7 Common Myths About SEO That You Need to Let Go
Search Engine Optimization is an inevitable part of digital marketing. It helps you get above your competitors and rank higher on search engines. But some myths never let you move forward.
While most myths are harmless, we can’t say the same for SEO myths. They mislead people into wasting their time and resources on things of less importance.
You cannot make guarantees with SEO because it’s not an overnight game. You need consistency and multiple strategies to achieve your goals and improve your rankings.
However, don’t let these seven myths misguide you and stop you from doing what’s important.
SEO is dead
Out of all the myths, this one is the most common. Social media platforms, emails, and abundant marketing techniques have created more opportunities to establish and promote a business online. However, Google remains irreplaceable.
If you live in ScottsDale and need to look for historical places, the first thing you’ll do is Google it. These simple things remind us that SEO is important for our everyday life not just for businesses.
Over 40,000 search queries happen every second, and Google accurately presents an answer to each search query. It does that with an appropriate website that has the answer to their question. This has been possible only because of SEO.
A statement like ‘SEO is dead’ only comes up when your techniques and efforts are not working well. That’s because the algorithm keeps changing, and so your techniques also need to evolve. Instead of re-thinking if your SEO efforts are worth it, try to formulate a better strategy based on data and audience insights.
As long as the internet is alive, there’s no scope for them to die soon.
You only need content for SEO
Content is vital for SEO, but it’s not the only thing that matters when you want to improve your rankings and get into the search engine’s good graces. Long-form content helps add value to the user and builds authority, so it’s an essential part of your website, but you cannot rely on it solely.
High-quality content is required to give some context to the users, use some keywords to enhance searchability, and communicate the intended message.
Many other factors contribute to a good search engine ranking apart from content like:
- Internal and external authority links
- Keyword research and usage
- User intent and experience
- Optimized multimedia
- Keyword-rich tags and descriptions
- Loading speed and device compatibility
A combination of all these things and high-quality content that addresses your audience’s problems and provides value is essential for SEO. Don’t let ‘content is king’ misguide you. It’s necessary, but not the only aspect for high rankings.
SEO is only a one-time thing
SEO requires a long-term investment because there are so many opportunities to enhance your score and improve your rankings that it’s impossible to exhaust them all in one go.
SEO experts charge a retainer fee and not a one-time fee because they need to work regularly. If you implement your SEO strategy and leave it for a while, you’ll see your rankings slowly dropping off.
Why does this happen?
- Lack of fresh content
- Competitor acquiring a higher ranking
- Problems with broken links and outdated plugins
- Not enough build-up backlinks
These are some reasons why SEO needs to be a regular practice with updates and audits.
There are never too many links. You can use thousands of keyword combinations on your website, and you still wouldn’t run out. It’s an evolving process and requires consistency.
You don’t need to focus on keyword research
This is one of the most popular myths in the digital world, and it’s shocking because keywords form the center of SEO. Ignoring keyword research can mislead you into optimizing your content for the wrong keywords, not relevant to your user.
Use research to identify keywords with high search intent for your niche and industry to optimize your website. These keywords will be used in the content, meta tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and URL. It also helps in Local SEO, when you want to rank high for a specific location, like Scottsdale for instance.
Without adequate keyword research, creating content will not show results. It needs to be optimized for what your audience is most likely to search for to land on your website.
Paid ads can increase organic ranking
Paid and organic have a very fine line between them, and various factors influence the two of them individually. There’s no evidence that running PPC ads on Google can improve organic ranking, although it may appear like it.
There’s no doubt that PPC is good for SEO. You can target keywords much better and test various campaigns to see what’s working with your audience. If you have a primary keyword as ‘Integrated IT Solutions,’ you can use multiple variations and target much better. It can increase clicks and conversion, but it can never directly impact your organic search ranking.
Paid ads can, however, boost the number of organic click-through-rate. When you search for a website directly, you see two options- the sponsored website link and the organic one. The user is likely to click the organic link first. This happens because of user intent and results in an increase of the organic CTR, but never the rankings.
Speed is not important for SEO
Let’s say a brand, Integrated IT Solutions, builds an excellent website with a great user experience, awesome content, and optimized SEO pages. However, their website takes ages to load, barring the user from accessing the content.
What will this do? They will bounce right off and go to the website of a competitor who has a fast load speed.
Speed holds a lot of importance in the digital world, and it’s important because of these reasons:
- It improves the ranking of your website
- Reduces the bounce rate by users
- Faster sites are easier to crawl by the search engines
- Speed= higher conversion rate
Most of all, your website needs to have a fast loading speed on mobile.
The faster your speed, the better rankings it can get.
SEO is all about ranking high
SEO can improve your rankings and help your website acquire a higher place on the search engine result page, but it’s not just about that.
More than rankings, traffic is a more significant factor that can help get more eyes to your website and convert more visitors into customers. It’s possible that if a website is ranking on number 1, then the website on number 2 gets more traffic. This may be because their content is more in-depth or ranking for more than one keyword.
Other things like improving your website’s hygiene, driving traffic, increasing revenue, and conversions are also some things you need to focus on to reap all the benefits SEO offers.
Conclusion
There are many myths about SEO out there, but these are some of the most common ones you need to avoid. Before you believe in anything people say about SEO, make sure they have data to back up their claim.
Use these myths as a guiding factor to not let baseless assumptions misguide you. Use your actionable knowledge and experiences to leverage SEO and boost your rankings and drive more traffic.
Let results and data replace assumptions when it comes to the internet!
