Did you knowSEO Myths That Should Be Ignored
It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to improve your company’s website, to create a marketing powerhouse, or to launch an authority blog – the first thing that must be considered is SEO as the essential growth strategy.
5 years ago, Google introduced a new major algorithm update called Panda and transformed SEO to become what it is today. The following year, a new algorithm called Penguin was introduced, and it was exactly these two updates that made SEO so powerful nowadays.
Some information for the less familiar readers: Prior to the appearance of Penguin and Panda, it was all about technical optimization, and SEO referred to nothing else but decent structures and valuable pages, keyword-packed headlines, saturation, and wisely measured keyword stuffing in the body text.
Five years ago, SEO stopped being so technical and requires little effort to win traffic in current times. The reason is that technical optimization is no longer perceived as the core of SEO, but rather its minimum basics, where there is a list of standards and best practices to comply with.
From where you stand now, you can safely assume everybody is familiar with these rules and will follow them, and you have to do much more than simply optimizing your site if you want to go out of the box, and become more visible.
For what is worth, you have to focus on content marketing and understand its importance. Content marketing is no longer a desirable bonus, but a mandatory ‘must have’ for creating leads, closing sales, and winning traffic.
One has to take particular care with content marketing, and avoid what Google deems to be ‘SEO manipulation’, and which many e-ventures still practice knowing that it is against the rules. Appropriate content marketing refers to marketing more than it does to content, and that’s how you should look at it.
For 10 years so far, webmasters, programmers, designers, but also entrepreneurs are confused with misconceptions and SEO myths which try to ‘reveal critical SEO rules’.
Completely identical domains have better rankings
Domains that match exactly may lead to better Google organic results, but those will rarely be sustainable. Most of the time, exact matches stand for low-quality sites and spam link building, which is why they should be avoided.
The registration length of your domain matters to your SEO
Is there an older SEO misconception? The truth is that registration length has nothing to do with SERPs.
It is a good idea to start your website on an expired domain
If the domain has expired or is dropped long ago, odds are big that it is spammed or has been permanently refused from Google Index. In order to check, look at the MajesticSEO historical index, and more specifically the Web Archive snapshots.
The age of the domain matters
It doesn’t mean that an older site will always rank better than a new one – there are numerous starters that outranked many older counterparts, generating approximately 18,000 visitors per day thanks to competitive keywords and high-quality content. This being said, there is a lot older websites can learn from newer ones.
A regional domain will make your website more competitive
There are many Google studies that show priority is given to quality information more than local content.
You can use 301 redirects to dismiss your Google penalty
Google won’t miss the fact that you’ve transferred penalized content to whatever new domain, so redirecting the URL won’t really help.
301 redirects are still a powerful SEO mean
Well, they were some years ago. The way things are now, redirecting old domains with 301 cannot help your SEO too much, but may even hurt the ranking instead.
If the website moves to a new domain, the SEO impact will be negative
The way Google puts it, moving a website to a new domain is a completely normal thing to do, and it is not expected to hurt SERP rankings. Still, the Webmaster Tools Help Center provides exhaustive technical guidelines on how you should do that, so try to follow them as closely as you can.
Your hosting location matters
The truth is that it doesn’t, and you will confirm it by looking at your 10 most important competitors on Google Maps.
The best way to be ranked higher is to work with dedicated IPs
It was Google that stated explicitly that dedicated IPs have nothing to do with rankings.
Private Blog networks can still rely on SEO hosting
To be completely honest, the enormous footprints left by SEO hosting are a piece of cake to detect, and will almost certainly lead to Google penalties.
You need nothing more than on-page SEO
On-page SEO is important for every website, but it is still nothing more than a basic optimization procedure, which is why you shouldn’t expect it to improve your Google ranking.
Following a lot of outbound links is not good for your Google ranking
As we all know, outbound links matter to the success of every website, as they link content out to important resources, and that’s why you should provide them without worrying that your Google ranking is affected.
Your ranking will improve if you include more indexed pages
This is a common misconception leading website owners to believe that higher rankings are only possible with a higher number of indexed pages. Whilst this can lead to a more distinguished and sophisticated website, it doesn’t automatically trigger better rankings.
SEO depends on H1 tags
According to search metrics, H1 tags and search engine rankings are almost not related at all, because H1 tags and headings contribute to accessibility and usability far more than they do SEO.
Invalid HTMLs will be penalized by Google
HTML codes are not ranking signals, and Google may never actually notice you have such a broken or an invalid code. Instead, you should try to improve your HTMLs for the sake of usability, knowing how many perfectly coded websites to compete with there are.
Your URLs should always end with .html
This has absolutely nothing to do with SEO and never had.
If you have great content, you don’t need anything else to rank well
Obviously, the quality of your content matters for backlinks and an improved user experience, but it is backlinks that make good rankings happen. Without them, content will be absolutely worthless for the purpose.
Duplicate content is always penalized
Google won’t take action against your website just because of duplicate content unless you’ve done it with the purpose to trick or manipulate your audience.
Infographics are no longer important
We’ve witnessed many weakening trends of the power of infographic directories, but they can still be useful. The current approach is called Guestographics, and refers to the use of infographics to build effective links, and providing genuine quality for visitors while competing with more than 2 million posts published every day.
Blogs are desirable, but not mandatory
Blogs are recommended to every business because of the need to provide relevant texts and to create backlinks efficient enough to make your website rank excellently for a longer period of time.
Videos will save the day
There are niches and websites where videos cover pretty much every need, but you have to remember that in certain cases they can limit the audience that can access your content. In fact, it is always better to back them up with textual content.
Nofollow links are not important
They’re not just important, but essential for backlink profiles. When Google and other search engines notice you have not nofollow links at all, they will automatically assume those links were not earned naturally, and will raise a red flag against you. Therefore, you should stop ignoring nofollow links as soon as possible.
Anchor text is off the scene
Some sources reveal a downfall trend in anchor text power, but we believe it is still very important for your SEO.
Forum signatures and blog comments can harm your website’s ranking
There is no way such thing can happen, as long as your website is an authority one which moderates spam in an efficient way.
Without backlinks, your website has no SEO value at all
You need to include a hyperlink in your website’s mentions in order to deliver co-citations, as such are the critical brand signal Google will consider.
You always have to aspire for Number 1
It is the ideal scenario for every website, but even the second or third positions are hard to achieve and deliver the resources you need. In most of the cases, website owners give up after getting there, but in case you want to pursue a higher ROI try to focus on related and lengthy keywords.
You have to pay Google AdWords in order to have higher organic rankings
Who told you this? It is an absolute myth, and you can confirm it by loading organic competitors on Similarweb.com and checking the display advertising panel to see how many of them are actually paying AdWords.
The same SEO tactics work for every website
There are many SEO tactics, and you should always try to use one that is specific for the purpose of your website and your industry. What works perfectly for one niche may be a disaster for another one, so choose wisely.
SEO is no longer trendy
More than the half of the world’s website traffic is driven by organic search, which makes SEO more popular and powerful than ever before.
SEO doesn’t make sense for small businesses
In fact, small businesses are the ideal environment for applying local SEO. Even Forbes confirmed it: SEO helps businesses grow more than ever before.
Content marketing helps SEO, it doesn’t harm it
The biggest and most dangerous SEO myth is that it doesn’t go well with content marketing. The truth is that the two are far from being mutually exclusive and that SEO is highly dependent on the quality of content. At the same time, content requires good SEO to promote it and make it more visible.
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