Let’s Debunk SEO Myths together! Time to unlearn the learned

Only thing which is constant in the world is ‘change’. This statement can be taken as good as any universal truth and there is no reason to believe that it won’t apply to the world of SEO or Search Engines. In the age, when internet was a teenager and Google was a toddler, Search engines had already came a long way ahead the way they were being used by both end users and SEOs.  That was the ‘Ice age’ with little rules, less power, zero penalties, malfunctioning weak search algorithms and desperate measures. Till date, SEO is plagued by many myths both for end users and marketers. We will try to resolve few of those SEO myths in this blog.

Google Panda and Google Penguin Algorithms

10 years back, you could have been forgiven if you didn’t know what ‘Panda’ and ‘Penguin’ are even if your kids knew that. If you are an SEO professional or a business owner looking to do your website’s SEO by yourself, you cannot debunk them even if you wished to. A sheer amount of time, money and efforts are being wasted by more than 90% of the professionals as they fail to keep them updated with latest Google panda and Google Penguin algorithms.

Let’s try to debunk some of these SEO myths together

SEO Myth #1: Site submission is the foundation

I can still see SEO professionals burning their lamp oil night after night in submitting their websites and links to Google, Yahoo and Bing. Though it doesn’t hamper your SEO effort and it might need a one-time effort for a newly made website, it’s not mandatory and Google, Yahoo and Bing are smart enough to index your website in their next crawling effort. Time is money, Honey!

SEO Myth #2: A good SEO is about chasing the rankings

SEO professionals might argue with me on this particular statement and would violently vote for ‘ranking’ being the prime motive behind their SEO efforts. I have seen clients spending thousands of dollars chasing keywords and rankings but this is not how SEO works. SEO is about providing relevant information to the user which enables him/her to eventually click and find more about what he/she is looking for. Although, a good amount of clicks is generated for first 3 positions in search results but you can still find a good amount of clicks and business being generated through search results for your website even if you are not in the top 3 position. There is so much of information clutter on internet that people won’t click on a website unless and until the information present over there is compelling enough.

SEO Myth #3: More links and Link building is better for SEO

Did you hear that Google has dropped ‘Page Rank’ long back? Or Did you hear about spam score, domain authority and page authority or Someone might have told you that link building is no more about numbers. Perhaps, Time to go back to ‘SEO’ play school! A plain, simple advice would be to spend time and money both on quality content and quality links. 100 low quality links on spammy websites with low domain authority won’t serve the purpose as 1 good quality link on a website with high domain authority.

SEO Myth #4: Social Media optimization has no correlation with SEO

For years, I have seen sales and marketing team working in silos and company’s efforts getting derailed. Social media and SEOs bear a similar relationship. This might have been true few years back but now people wake up with Facebook, twitter & Instagram notifications.  The fact that people spend a good amount of time on Social media and do a lot of social search for content on channels like Facebook & YouTube, it has a huge impact on SEO. Time to wake up Guys! Social signals are must for a better SEO.

SEO Myth #5: On page Optimization is all about Title & Meta Tags

While most of the HTML Tags are very important and must be done for a good SEO, it doesn’t mean that on page SEO efforts are over with this. This is simply the tip of iceberg and a lot more needs to be done. Just keep doing the good work folks! Remember, you have to find better ways to help search engines present more information about your website.

SEO Myth #6: Keyword repetition is must for a good SEO

“I love this book, my grandparents also love this book, my friends love this book too, you all must love this book.” I guess that most of the school kids can write a better and contextual sentence than the previous one. I still find it difficult to understand why most of the adult and well learnt SEO professionals make this mistake time and over while including keywords in their content. Unnecessary repetition of keywords lowers the readability and interest of the readers. And you would say that who cares about readers, all we care about is how search engine comprehends them. Guys! NLP or Natural language processing along with relatedness is an integral part of search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing. Time to Google about how NLP works! That might help you in creating a better content in the future. Perhaps, it won’t hurt if you can reduce the no. of ‘love’ and replace them with something related in the first sentence.

SEO Myth #7: Google asks for more Content, Homepage must be stuffed with content

On most of the websites, Homepage acts as a gateway. Customers spend very less time in scanning the entire homepage and you have very little time and fewer words and links to explain who you are and what do you do? Many a times, home pages are driven by call-to-action like form submission, login, download etc. A good copywriting along with a smooth navigation system would help customers finding in more information rather than too much of text purely for an SEO purpose

SEO Myth #8: NAP is sufficient for Local SEO

For most of the website owners, Local SEO is plain and simple. Include your NAP .i.e Name, Address and Phone in the website footer and wherever possible and it’s done. This is the basic little thing which you can do but most of the local SEO goes beyond that and is often underestimated yet very powerful in driving traffic, sales and business through your website.

SEO Myth #9: Usability and Speed doesn’t affect SEO

The devices on which we access internet and information has evolved over the time. And if somebody believes that these devices don’t impact SEO then they are still living in a dark age. More than 50% of the searches and internet access happen over mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. User behavior has changed and search has evolved as well. If you website is slow and sluggish, doesn’t have a smooth navigation and appropriate call-to-action, it would never achieve the goals with which it was built. It’s better to be late than never. You need to involve a developer and get usability issues fixed on your website before putting further efforts.

SEO Myth #10: Using Private Blog network or multiple domains to promote one domain

This has been the most popular practice in early days of search engines and Google. SEO professionals use to create a set of websites on random stuff with thin content and would put their efforts to optimize them separately and finally use them to optimize any of their own or third party websites. Similar was the case the with a Private Blog network, wherein links and content of clients were being promoted on different Blogs. It’s very easy for Google to track down which website belongs to whom and the links get devalued automatically. It’s better to build links naturally and let others connect with your content instead.

Conclusion:

I know that I have shared my opinion about what doesn’t work with SEO anymore. But if you read through the lines, you will surely get to know what exactly needs to be fixed and what can be done for the betterment of your website. There are bad guys out there, but there are certainly many good & knowledgeable guys ready to help you out. Now that you know what separates bad guys from good guys in SEO, you can definitely make it work for your business.

Skillzlearn is a Gurgaon (delhi ncr) based training institute offering course in Digital Marketing and Data Analytics through classroom program and online instructor led program. Attend free demo session on Digital Marketing or free demo session on Data Analytics. You can call us on +91-8800226570 or mail me on [email protected]

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