SEO – Search Engine Optimization is getting more complex and competitive every year.
Back from 1998, Google never disclosed its search algorithm (why would they do it?) and its ranking algorithm is updated at least a few times a year.
Google never disclosed its search algorithm (why would they do it?) and its ranking algorithm is updated at least a few times a year.
This lack of transparency and miscommunication creates a vacuum, which is often filled by SEO myths, “SEO experts” and other elements of SEO bulls***, which can really harm your website and overall digital marketing performance.
SEO myths you should never follow
Let’s take a look at most common SEO myths.
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1. SEO is an old way of doing things
A lot of marketers already refer to SEO as an old way of doing things, a technique back from the 2000s.
The truth is SEO still might perform really well for your digital marketing campaigns – both for large enterprises and small personal blogs, both for B2B and B2C.
2. SEO is dead
Another, more radical SEO myth is that SEO is just dead. It is super old technology, which doesn’t work anymore, therefore you should focus your marketing efforts on likes of Facebook, Instagram or Youtube.
While partly, it is true that SEO is much more complicated and competitive these days, especially with English content.
But, there are many examples of world-class companies and startups, who invest heavily in content marketing and SEO, including Hubspot, Intercom, Buffer, Booking.com, Momondo, GetYourGuide and so on.
Still, SEO has one of the highest ROI among all digital marketing channels.
3. SEO and content marketing is the same thing
It is close, but not exactly.
Content marketing can involve amplifying your content among different mediums, while SEO focuses on effort, which boosts up your search engine rankings.
4. Forget backlinks, just write content
Backlinks are quite often the hardest part of SEO.
A lot of digital marketers and bloggers don’t really get, what are backlinks and why you need to do active link building campaigns.
That’s why, there is this common thesis: “Just write high-quality content, based on keywords”.
It is kinda true, in time your content will start to deliver organic traffic and natural backlinks on its own, but it may take much more time.
Instead, try to do these easiest link building campaigns – and you will immediately see results.
Arfa’s note: The Absolute Free Ways To Build Quality Backlinks To Your Website
5. Just buy backlinks then
Another part of bloggers and SEOs do recognize the importance of domain rating and a number of referring domains to your blog posts.
But, instead of participating in the community and high-quality link hunting, they just use first Fiverr gig to “get 10000 high-quality backlinks to your site for $10”. It’s one of the common SEO myths most people believe in and also spend money on it.
In a better scenario, these backlinks don’t work at all.
In the worst scenario, they will harm your site and lead to a Google penalty. Maybe, you will even need to switch domains…
6. Write short content – it is faster to read
One of the strangest SEO misconceptions or SEO myths I have seen is that you should only produce 300-500 words content.
Because, people don’t like to read a lot and if the content is short – they will read it in full and enjoy it.
It can make sense. But, for SEO purposes, it doesn’t. According to research from Co-Schedule, best-performing blogs on Google are in 1500-2200 words range.
Why?
Because, Google prefers comprehensive content, which gives a full answer to a specific search query.
Arfa’s Note: The beginner’s guide to do SEO for every blog post you write!
7. Write only long-form content (3000 words+)
So, it means that you need to produce only long forms?
Nope…
See, after Google rankbrain algorithm update, everything became super complicated. 🤯
Google judges content not on length, but how it answers the search query.
If it is 10000 words long, but there is no clear and comprehensive answer to the search query – it won’t rank.
That is the main thing you should keep in mind while writing new posts on your blog.
Arfa’s note: If you want to get organic traffic then learn to create topic clusters to rank for thousands of keywords. This excellent strategy will help you rank for endless keywords.
8. You don’t need keyword research
Another common misconception among bloggers is that you can just produce content and don’t care about keywords research.
In other words, this approach is called “Just put sh** on the wall and hope it sticks”. 😅
Of course, you are welcome to write articles on any topics you want, but if you are aiming for SEO efficiency, it is recommended to produce blogs, based on data, which is top searched queries in Google.
Why do you need to guess? Just by using Google suggest or free Google Keyword Planner tool you can have a list of top keywords in every niche.
Obviously, if your blog is young, don’t go after competitive and high-volume keywords (>1000 searches per month). Start with long-tails, low volume ones – 50-500 monthly searches.
Tools like Keysearch and KwFinder are amazing tools to find keywords, search volume, competition, and other factors to help you find long tail queries to rank on Google. Try out keysearch for free!
If you’re looking for a keyword research tool then take a look at kwfinder. It is a great tool to find long tail keywords. This kwfinder review explains all the steps you need to follow to find the best keywords.
SEO can get complicated, therefore the majority of bloggers just default to sharing their posts on Facebook, Twitter and/or groups.
While SEO is harder than sharing your blogs on different platforms but it is more efficient in the long term.
SEO brings evergreen traffic – even old posts, published 2 years ago, will bring you a lot of traffic every month. It is like recurring revenue in business – your traffic adds up every month.
While, if you share something on Facebook – it might go viral, bring 100K visitors in a few days, but then your content is dead forever. And you need to go over again. In most cases, it can be really unpredictable and unsustainable.
You should do both – SEO and social media 🙂
Recommendation: On-Page SEO is what you need to make your content rank on Google. From titles to internal links, all of the must-follow seo practices are included in this affordable ebook. Check out Easy On-Page SEO
10. SEO campaign will perform well in ~2 months
One of the negative sides of SEO is that it takes a lot of time.
Even if you are Neil Patel or Brian Dean (a.k.a. the kings of SEO) it may take 6-8 months to see first tangible results (traffic, conversions, leads, orders, etc) coming from SEO.
Usually, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. Bloggers who win in SEO usually have a lot of patience – 2-4 years of hard work.
So, just have that in mind.
You can also watch this video from Neil Patel to learn how SEO actually works in 2019.
Interested in learning more about search engine optimization?
Related articles on SEO;
Winning SEO tips to help you rank for Google
Top 3 Free Google SEO tools you can’t miss!
SEO demystified : How to improve seo and keyword rankings
Do you know any other SEO myths that keep bloggers and website owners from getting organic traffic and improved rankings to their website?
Please share in the comments below.
This is the guest post written by Andrii Gor.
SEO fanatic with 10+ years of experience. He focuses on keyword research, rank tracking and tech SEO hacks. Check out his SEO blog – Online Hikes and an inspirational site for entrepreneurs – Museuly.
Yes! There are so many myths surrounding SEO. I could rant about all the misconceptions around bounce rate again and again!
As with social media (as Hazel pointed out), search engines also change and evolve all the time. And then people get all confused when their old SEO attempts don’t do much anything anymore. Search engines keep tweaking their algorithms and adding new ranking factors.
It’s also really important to understand that most things people “know” about SEO are only speculation, since search engines keep their ranking factors secret. For example the whole thing about content length is… Well, nobody really knows if or how it affects your search ranking. Google and others just give very vague information about it, and everyone else has to rely on trial and error.
Thank you for this post!
Hi Mervi!
That’s an important point. These algorithms keep changing and there’s nothing more we can do to it. As you said, it’s all the game of trials and errors.
Yeah, every other SEO guru has something else to say. The best thing is to just keep consistent with your seo efforts, and don’t rely on misconceptions.
SEO is a huge niche, thereby having myths around it is quite obvious. However, I want to add one more here. I’ve heard many people saying what’s the use of no-follow links, just build high authority do-follow back-links and the ranks will start showing up. But is this true? According to me, a healthy ratio of NF and DF is mandatory to keep.
Hi Rashika,
I’m not really sure that a balance between nofollow, and dofollow is a requirement. But, one should really pay attention to your all links either no-follow, or do-follow. If there’s a requirement of no-follow then you need to make sure that those links are nofollow. Similarly, it works for dofollow. Because, all these links are kind of indicators.
Hope someone else, probably an SEO expert, shed light on this.
This is a very fantastic post on SEO. Yes, people today are following the one trend only i.e. “content is king” and they just write fluff about the things which are already promoted many times on the internet. Content is necessary but only when it is written very carefully keeping the in-depth keyword research in hand. Also, just writing is not enough, you need to build back links too in order to get the required results.
Hey Jackson,
Well said! Just beside putting out the content, one needs to make some efforts to build quality backlinks.
Hey,
Thanks for pointing out these true SEO myths.
Now Social media sucks on generating traffic for new bloggers. They are prioritizing video content and their own platforms.
We should work on SEO!
Again Thanks!
Hey Inu,
Absolutely! SEO is an important aspect that you can’t ignore or avoid if you really want to sustain online.
Social media platforms have ever-changing algorithms as well so what may work this year on Facebook may not work next year.
As far as traffic goes, SEO is still a winner.
Hi Hazel,
You made a good point about SEO! Just like facebook, we can even talk about Pinterest? If it ever gets down or the algorithm changes, the site will suffer but when it comes to SEO, you are always there. It’s so important to work on seo and avoid those seo myths.