Debunking the Most Common SEO Myths That Exist Today

Every month, around 62% of people on Earth use the internet. That’s 6.88 billion in total, conducting billions of searches every day.

What are they looking for? News, entertainment, random facts, and businesses like yours.

So, if you want to thrive in this competitive environment, you need to find out how to attract their attention. Search Engine Optimization is the only way to do this, but first, you need to separate the SEO myths from the facts.

Get started here by exploring some of the more common misconceptions, misunderstandings, and downright untruths about Jimmy Huh SEO.

Keywords Don’t Count Anymore

Way back when Google’s Hummingbird revamp came buzzing onto the scene claiming to change the future of search, everyone claimed that keywords no longer count.

Type any search query into Google, and you’ll see that they do still count.

Keywords still come up on the front page, clear as day. You just need to know how to get them there.  

Quality is what counts after Hummingbird, and since a clear SEO keyword strategy is part of creating useful content, keywords still matter.  

Forget about keyword counts and ratio, and focus on user intent, and your keywords will still work for you.

Hiring an SEO Agency Will Take You to the Top Fast

If an SEO agency promises to take your website to the top of Google’s front page within days, take your money and run.

Anyone who truly understands SEO knows that it takes time. It also takes a lot of hard work, insight, and some luck.

Many factors affect how Google displays your page. So, it’s impossible to predict how a page of content or even an entire website will fare. 

What an SEO agency can do for you is help you discover your users’ intent and help you fine-tune your copy to meet those needs.

So, if you don’t have time to master SEO yourself and run your site accordingly, hire an agency. Likewise, if you want help with discovering more useful keywords and want to stay updated on the latest way to use them, hire an agency. 

No search engine optimization agency can guarantee you top rankings fast, if ever.

They can teach you how to make the most of your site and reach more potential customers, and that’s all you need. If you apply these smart marketing principles consistently, your site might just make its way onto the front page. 

Guest Posting Has Had its Day

When Google head, Matt Cutts, warned website owners to stop using guest posts to get links, a lot of SEO experts took his statement the wrong way.

There’s no difference between a guest post and any other kind of content in the eyes of Google. All content marketing depends on high-quality content with a solid link profile.

So, what Cutts meant was – stop publishing rubbish content using an outside contributor. 

Guest posts work well for boosting your SEO as long as they’re high-quality posts with contextual links.

More Keyword SEO Myths

There’s a dangerous myth floating around but how you shouldn’t bother with keyword research anymore. Since keywords are what internet users use in their searches, there’s no way you can skimp on keyword research if you want to optimize your content.  

What you must do is avoid over-using your keywords and excessive use of keyword-rich anchor texts. 

Focus your marketing efforts on ROI instead of ranking when choosing your keywords. You can use Google keyword planner to help you find the best keywords, and you should also keep tabs on which keywords your competitors use.  

Again, user intent is imperative here. Instead of ‘digital camera’ try ‘best digital camera’, or ‘buy a digital camera’. As far as possible look for high-volume long-tail keywords i.e. ‘where to buy a digital camera.’

Meta Tag Keywords Don’t Matter

Meta tags provide structured information about a website in HTML documents. Although Google doesn’t use these tags specifically for ranking purposes, they do give structure to your content and tell Google what the content is about.

That makes them vital for the search engine to place them anywhere on the internet at all. In many cases, meta tag keywords make your content more appealing, and more appealing content gets more clicks. 

Too Many Keywords = Poor Rankings

This one is a yes and no. Google dislikes over-optimizing by using the same keyword over and over again. Yet, as long as you use your keywords naturally, and they add to the value of your content, the more, the merrier.

One way to avoid accidental over-optimization is to try and diversify your keywords according to the following categories:

• Branded keywords
• Product keywords
• Short-tail keywords
• Long-tail keywords
• Customer-defining keywords
• Market-defining keywords
• Geo-targeting
• Latent semantic indexing (LSI)

As always, useful, well-written content is king in the eyes of Google and all other search engines.

Social Media Doesn’t Impact Your SEO

Social media doesn’t directly affect your SEO at all, but it can draw Google’s attention to your website.

The search engine views shares and likes as social signals. These social signals help add credibility to your website and can increase your rankings due to this.  

It’s difficult to quantify the benefits of social signals since they don’t provide direct links to a page.

SEO Is a Learning Curve

As a small business owner, it’s easy for these SEO myths to lead you down the wrong path or cause you to give up hope.

If you want to enjoy the most innovative marketing strategies for your company, it’s always best to get help from an agency until you learn the ropes. A trial and error approach can do a lot of harm to your online rankings.

Would you like to find out more about the ins and outs of the marketing industry and all its quirks? Browse some more of our blog articles.