If there’s one component of digital marketing that many people struggle to comprehend thoroughly, it’s, undoubtedly, organic SEO. We get it; it’s no easy feat to understand all the ins and outs of SEO, and trends continuously come and go. However, if you have some working knowledge of what SEO is, you may have heard some of these myths. This post is dedicated to debunking these myths and provide you with a clearer understanding of SEO.
Check out these top myths about SEO that you may still believe.
All Backlinks are Equal
Having other websites link back to your site is one of the more complicated/time-consuming SEO tactics, and a huge misconception is believing that all backlinks are created equally. For example, people think that if they link back to their website through their social media pages, it will boost their rankings. WRONG.
Hyperlinks on social media sites are categorized as “nofollow” links, meaning search engines are “told” to not count these links on these particular websites toward their ranking. The best backlinks you want pointing back to your site should come from other authoritative, industry-related websites. Spammy backlinks could hurt your rankings, so make sure only authentic websites are leading back to you.
The More Keywords Your Web Page Uses, The Better
After you complete keyword research, you should have a good list of competitive keywords to optimize your website. You may think it’s wise to group relevant keywords to optimize a single page, but all you’re doing is setting your web page up to compete with itself and confuse search engines. On top of that, if you’re overusing these keywords in your content, your copy could sound more robotic than human, which is also a no-no for search engines.
Aim to have one primary keyword and possibly one secondary keyword to optimize a web page. If you have other keywords that are similar to each other, use them to optimize blog posts and link them to the main web page about the topic.
Your Website Will See Ranking Results in a Few Days
Too often, business owners assume they’ll see instant results with their SEO efforts. Whether they just launched their new website or tweaked their SEO strategy, a site will not start seeing results in a few months unless they are actively creating original content for their defined keywords. On top of that, SEO is an ongoing effort, so one blog post dedicated to a particular keyword is not going to cut it. You need to continuously create plenty of high-quality content to start seeing results in your favor.
Link Building is Irrelevant
With Google’s updates rolling out regularly, people seem to believe that link building is dead. To support the first point in this post, spammy link building is irrelevant, but quality link building from reputable websites is critical. In fact, here are some link building strategies to try in 2018.
Aim to be linked from other industry-related blogs, directories, and websites. While it’s nice to get linked from non-industry-related sites, it doesn’t have as much of an impact as ones within your niche.
On-Page SEO is All You Need to Focus On
Meta titles/descriptions, image alt text, and engaging content sprinkled with your keywords are all essential for SEO (also known as on-page SEO), but that’s not all you need for better rankings. Other key areas to keep in mind include:
- User experience: This should be an ongoing driver for your content. Loading speed, mobile responsiveness, and content layout are all a part factors to consider to improve the user experience.
- Off-page SEO: This includes backlinks, engagement with social media/other blogs, and local SEO.
- Other factors include conversion rates, web authority, and more.
No matter how vast your SEO skills are, it’s a lot of work and ongoing dedication. By releasing yourself from believing these myths, we hope you have more confidence in your SEO efforts and can better understand what you need to do to start seeing results.
If you would like to learn more about SEO, get ahold of us today.
