If you think that SEO is Dead or Link building is spam, then you need to think again. Because these are nothing but myths that shouldn’t have place in a modern day SEO. Read here how we debunk these myths.
SEO have gone through major changes in past some years that many experts can’t figure out which tactic is outdated or which should work. Besides, there is no hard and fast rules of SEO that work for everybody. As a result, we have many myths and misconceptions about SEO methodology that hinder your website growth. Here, we have debunked such biggest SEO myths…..
TECHNICAL MYTHS IN SEO
1) SEO is Dead
“SEO is Dead” is the common catch phrase doing round over the Internet. Many experts believe that the dominance of PPC, SEM and Adwords have made SEO obsolete.
But that doesn’t mean SEO is really dead. SEO is here to stay as long as the search engine is. However, the changes in Google algorithm require websites to go beyond the trademark SEO practices like keyword stuffing, linking and cloaking. If you still stick with these traditional practices, chances are your website may attract penalty from Google. In other words, SEO is no more the game of keywords and link building. Today, SEO has expanded to research, testing and analysis to meet the target audience needs.
It means that you need to update your website with the latest SEO trends in your industry and lay stress on the relevant content that is helpful for the user.
If anything is dead in SEO, it would be the malicious and spamming practices falling out of search engine guidelines.
2) Link Building means Black Hat SEO
Google’s algorithm finds link building invalid only when it is intended to drive traffic by spamming tactics or leaving irrelevant links on the third party websites. Usually, the link has nothing to do with the content on the page where it is listed. Google has now started penalizing those websites practicing such kind of link building, so these link building tactics are not powerful anymore and start on declining. This is why many people think that link building is the Black Hat SEO tactics, which is not true at all.
Natural link building is always in the good books of Google as they are used to enhance the user’s experience and content relevancy.
3) Site Submission to Google is Must:
Whether you’re a startup with new website or you’ve been in business a while, your SEO expert or company might have advised you to submit your website to Google. Sadly, many SEO companies charges fee for the website submissions, which is free of cost. Is this still effective way to be found over Internet?
First of all, if your website has been live over Internet for over a week and can be visited by typing the domain name into the address bar, it means that it can be already accepted by a search engine as submissions are done automatically these days.
4) HTTPS Encrypted Site Doesn’t Matter for SEO
You might have observed that some URLs start with http:// while others are prefixed by http:// while making online transactions—a slight difference of “s” letter, which is very crucial. Website starting with URL https are secured and encrypted so that your personal information can’t be hacked while making payment. It is also known as SSL or Secure Sockets Layer.
Is it important from SEO prospective? Yes, Google has made it clear that it would give preference to the URL’s starting with HTTPS. It simply means that your website’s ranking could drop if you still use the standard HTTP. But having achieved SSL certification will do nothing unless your website lacks high quality content and other SEO norms.
5) Keyword Optimization and Keyword stuffing are Same Thing
Well, there is a very thin difference between keyword stuffing and keyword optimization. As you know, keyword optimization is the crucial part of SEO to drive traffic to your website. Plus, they help you find your target audience and improve your visibility. A good keyword optimization means to follow the keyword density and using synonym.
But keyword stuffing is the different thing which is done intentionally and repeating it multiple times to get ranking. Needless to say that keyword stuffing is not natural and can earn your website penalty from Google.
In this way, keyword optimization is different from the keyword stuffing. They can’t be the same thing.
6) H1 is Must for On Page SEO
H1 tag is useful from the user’s perspective, but they don’t influence your page ranking as they are believed to do by some SEO experts. H1 tag presents your webpage content in an organized way but it can’t be the influential factor for your page ranking. In other words, they have been just reduced to just CSS and act as the reference for the designer for font styling and size. But headlines are important to provide information to the users in one glance.
7) Content is the Only King:
Twenty years ago, in 1996, Bill Gates claimed,” Content is the King.” And he was true. Content is ruling everywhere over Internet. It has become stereotype to lay stress on the need of the quality content. But it was somehow not true that Content is the only king. Yes, quality content matters but user experience is above everything, whether it’s fulfilled from text or graphics over the website. In simple words, you need to be very good on the presentation of your quality content, for example, use of infographics can get the job done for you. Also you must avoid duplicate content and to keep track of Plagiarism, there are several useful tools. And remember, Google counts on usability factors including page load time, site speed, and time spent on the website to check if your website has met user’s expectations.
8) Social Media Can’t Help in SEO
Social media may not have an apparent correlation with SEO, as your social media traffic will not be influential factor for SERPs. However, it may affect your online presence, if it is not the major game changer. With the use of social media platforms and aggressive content sharing through them, the social sharing may aid link building and drive traffic to your website.
For example, traffic from Google Plus is always discovered by Google while indexed tweets are great for the brand awareness. Although successful social presence can’t be an assurance to improve your SEO, there is a light signal that it can help with that.
9) Website Bounce Rate Doesn’t Matter for Ranking
Many SEO minds think that bounce rate has nothing to do with your site ranking, which is ridiculous. Bounce rate tells how long a user has stayed on your page—higher your bounce rate the quicker users are leaving your webpage.
10) Image Optimization is Not That Important
A user will use a keyword or phrase to find the images over Internet. In this way, images can generate lot of traffic. This is because search engine reads images with the Alt Text given on them. If your images lack alt text along with other description, chances are they don’t appear in image searches, affecting your traffic from that Alt text. So, image optimization is as important as keyword optimization for your content.
11) Mobile App is Must for Your Business
Mobile app can be beneficial for your users. But that should not be the crucial factor to run your business. There are many businesses around the world who still don’t have mobile app. For example, the hotel your next door may not have the mobile app for reservation, but still it has a good business.
So, mobile app is can be necessary if you are thinking to expand your business.
12) More Webpages Means Better Ranking
Having a large quantity of webpages doesn’t benefit your search results unless they are property optimized. No matter, whether your site having less or more pages, they should be optimized with good SEO tactics. You can find several websites on the top of searches in spite of their fewer web pages than those who remain at the bottom. It means that search engine gives value to the quality content than the bulk of the web pages.
13) Video Optimization Doesn’t Matter
Video optimization has become the important part of SEO campaigns over the past few years. The user finds video interactive rather than the textual details on the webpage, making them to stay more time on the webpage.
Secondly, several videos rank top on the Google searches. So, having optimized videos clearly means you earn more traffic while enhancing your user’s experience.
14) Prefer More links Than More Content
One of the most asked questions, “Link building or content generation?” Well, links are the crucial aspect of your SEO strategy, but that should not be the reason to compromise with your content quality. There is no use of doing link building in bulk or blindly if they are not linked to relevant pages from reliable sources. Make sure you content should be appropriate for web pages, blog posts, and guest posts. In many cases, your content may do the work of link building.
15) There is No Use of Blog Commenting
If you think user’s comments on your blog are just “comments” and won’t work much, you need to think again. Blog commenting is not useless. They can act as your potential keywords. For example, many search results direct you towards the comments rich website, forum or user threads. Make sure you don’t approve the comments containing spams or promotional links. On the other hand, you can invite traffic to your website by placing useful and relevant links in your blog comments on other website.
GENERAL MYTHS IN SEO
1) SEO is a scam
SEO is not scam as long as it is done legally according to the search engine guidelines. As it has been told earlier that Google stresses on the good SEO practices, SEO is neither scam nor a foul game to manipulate Google searches. Rather, it is a way to improve your website ranking and visibility. However, several black hat SEO practices may make anyone feel that SEO is a scam.
2) SEO Provides Result Quickly
Rome was not built in a day! Same goes with SEO’s results, which require your patience, effort and time. This is because it takes time to earn a user’s engagement followed by his trust. Plus, several technical factors like indexing and web crawlers, which analyze each webpage and given follow links. They fetch data to the Google’s servers. It takes time, no matter how upgraded your XML and HTML sitemaps are. And it’s only rewarding if you follow right SEO tactics, otherwise it’s a waste of time, money and patience.
3) Doing SEO Once is Enough; NO UPDATES
Given the algorithms change, competition fluctuation, link tending to be dated, you must keep your SEO strategy up to date and upgrade the older efforts. Because SEO is transforming and there is a constant need to change the older SEO methods. Besides, customers look for change.
4) Using SMO Means You Don’t Need SEO Anymore
SEO and Social Media can go hand in hand, but they can’t be each other alternative. Social media may be search ranking factor, but they can’t be as dominant as SEO. The role of social media is to strengthen the content, earn views for website and promote the engagement, convincing Google to rank the page.
5) Spending Money on Paid Search Helps Your Organic Rankings
Sadly, it doesn’t work!
SEO runs smoothly if there is a sync between paid search and organic ranking, which is rarely possible. Paid searches let you choose the efficient keywords to improve your ranking but Google Keyword Planner is still the reliable way to build keywords.
6) One Negative Comment Will Affect Your Business
Every business faces bitter reaction from unsatisfied customers. This won’t matter much if you have 100 positive comments on the way to cover that one. But you should take every single negative comment and take it as an opportunity to bring improvement. With your quality services and customer attention, you can stop the multiplication of the negative comments.
7) No Effective Conversation Rate From Mobile
According to one survey, people like to spend more time on mobile phone than desktop. The other survey says that people spend over 80% of their time using mobile apps. This shows mobile phone has become the powerful medium. Whether it’s shopping or ticket booking, people use mobile phone because it is more convenient, fast and easy than the desktop version. Having a responsive website or mobile app can speed up your conversation rate.
8) I Don’t Need Blog for My Business
If it is true, then you find blog section missing at some of the big brands’ websites. They use blog for customer engagement towards their product. For example, a skincare product company would have a blog on “acne tips” that also recommends user to use their acne cream. You can learn this strategy well from Ebay blogs. So keep updating your blog with relevant information as it can benefit you in many ways.
9) Google Impose Penalty for Copied Content
Google prefers original content. But it is doubtful to say that Google will penalize the copied content. If it is true, then 25-30 percent website with duplicated content will be banned. Several sites have the articles which have been published on other platforms, but still they get visitors.
According to Matt Cutts, former head of web spam team at Google, told that duplicate content won’t be an issue, unless it is spammy.
However, Google can’t tolerate the spam or excessive copied content to manipulate the search results.
So, these are the common myths and misconceptions in SEO which shouldn’t be the part of your online marketing anymore. Besides, keep your eye on the updates and the new SEO practices to ensure better productivity.