15 Most Common and Effective Myths to know about SEO

SEO Myths – Search Engine Optimization should be a top priority for your website. SEO is an evolving science. Internet is full of SEO tips and hints but still SEO is always challenging. It keeps on changing. And even now some SEO analysts continue to understand some of the basic concepts wrong. An organization should have a dedicated SEO person to work with day to day activities and keep abreast of the changes in the world of SEO. Only then an organization can succeed in its SEO.

Over the recent years a lot of have become prominent about SEO Myths. And these misconceptions will mislead the beginners of SEO Myths. Every day a new myth is born and it gradually adds up to the existing old myth. The final result is high growth in SEO Myths.

This article will help you to know the common SEO Myths and assumptions about SEO and will also help you to overcome the same.

Common SEO Myths

1. I must Submit My site to Google

Submitting your site to Google does not have anything to do with SEO. Search engines will find your site even if it is not submitted to Google and other search engines.

Even if you submit your site to Google, the crawlers will come to your site only if it is apt to the search. So submitting your website to the Google does not give you any guarantee.

2. Having Large number of links is the best SEO practice

Links are still important in SEO. Building links are even now considered as a important ranking factor. But it does not carry the value that it did before.

In the past SEO analyst carried out link building without researching about the linking domain. But now a day’s link building should be done in a unique way. The provided links should be of high quality. So in today’s world quality is given more importance than quantity. If you know to build proper quality links then less number of link will even work wonders for you.

Many SEO persons will have a question in their mind whether to focus on link building or content generation. Link building is a crucial part of a website. You should have highly relevant and diverse sources that can be linked to your site. Link building is not about number anymore. Some companies also hire specialist to do link building.

3. Secure website is not important for SEO

You can notice two type of URL’s appearing in your browser when you search for something. One starting with “http://” and the other starting with “https://. The one with “https://” gives you sensitive information which need to be very safe and secure.

That extra ‘s’ in the URL means that the website is safe from hackers and all your information are stored safely. That ‘s’ is called Secure Sockets Layer.

Google and other search engines has started ranking ‘https’ sites more higher than the normal ‘http’. So if your website still follows the traditional ‘http’ then your ranking will definitely be affected.

4. SEO is all about Ranking

There is a big misconception that higher ranking of a site means more traffic to the site. But it is totally wrong. Yes of course there is a correlation between the search result placement and the click through rates but the ultimate goal is not the ranking.

The click through rates and user behaviour appear to be different. Recently a study has proved that the click through rates of the first three search results in the first page is equal to that of the first three search results the subsequent pages.

Your website may rank high but it cannot guarantee you more click through rates. This is mainly because of two reasons

• You would have not chosen the correct keyword strategy and would have ended up with keywords which are not relevant to your subject.
• Your meta descriptions are not that attractive to the visitors

To solve this issue you can use tools like Google Adwords which will help you to create a good keyword strategy.

5. Meta Description matters a lot

In the previous year’s meta tags and meta description were considered an important part of SEO. Meta descriptions are contents that explain the contents of the web pages in brief. It will appear in Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Meta description includes the keywords for which you wanted to rank your site. Now this process was spammed to death and it has no bearing on search engines. But on the other hand, Meta description expose your site as best to the visitors through its content. It is a compelling factor which makes the visitor click on your site. Thus in turn it increases the click through rate which is considered as the number 1 ranking factor by Google.

6. Keyword Optimization is the key to SEO

Text is used to communicate the message to the visitors or users. This text usually includes keywords in order to make search engines understand that the website or webpage is related to the search query entered by the browser. But now a days Google uses latent semantic indexing method for search.

Through this method the search engines crawl to the webpage which has more common terms or phrases related to the search query. This method also takes the meanings of the keyword into consideration.

You don’t need to write your keyword more frequently in your content. Over optimization of keyword is also a big disadvantage of SEO.

So it is important to note that Google is no longer considering to match the keywords typed in the search query box to the keywords in your webpage content.

Always write the content targeting your users and not the search engines. Only such content can give the users a good experience. Then your content becomes high quality and more relevant.

7. Keywords need to be an exact match

Keywords are more important for content. But keywords need not be repeated verbatim throughout the content. If you want to use a keyword as a headline then your objective is to write a prompt headline that explains clearly what your content is all about. This applies to the main content of your page also.

Keyword stuffing should be avoided in the WebPages. Google keeps on updating its algorithm to eliminate the poor contents in the site. Keyword stuffing is very dangerous to your site and you will get penalized for that.

8. H1 is the most important element

H1 is important but not very important. H1 is the title tag of your content. It is used mainly for styling purpose and it does not have a great impact on SEO. H1 is a part of CSS which decides about the font styling and size to be applied for the entire content. So it does not matter what heading tag you use it should convey a clear message on what the content is all about .

9. Homepage needs a lot of content

Have you come across a page that looks spammy ?

Home page is the first impression you create to your visitors. It conveys what your business is about and what they can expect from you. It does not mean that you should load your home page with contents. Keyword density is a persistent myth in SEO but it is disapproved a lot of times. Your home page should give details about who you are, what you do, your location, your business advantages and how they can contact you. The visitors should leave your site with full satisfaction and not with confusion.

10. Number of pages matter

There is a common myth that more pages drive more traffic to your site. But that does not help your SEO in any way. Website is all about quality contents. So how many ever pages you have and if the content is not good then you would not have a better ranking in search engine. Number of pages does not matter because of the following reasons

• Whatever you publish does not get indexed
• Even if the pages get indexed they don’t remain in the index
• Pages which are indexed does not mean they will drive more traffic to your site

11. Good user experience is just an added bonus

Website owners should always write contents focussing their users instead of search engines. Users experience and website engagement are added into the top ranking algorithm of Google recently. If Google wants to crawl to your site more often, then your site should offer a good user experience. To improve the user experience of the site then you need to focus on few factors like

• Page loading time
• Bounce rate
• Time on page
• Page views per visit
• Navigation through the pages

If you satisfy the users with your content which they can easily understand then you will automatically satisfy the search engines top ranking algorithm.

12. Local SEO is not important anymore

This myth is totally wrong. Concentrating on Local SEO will help your business to be found out by people who are very close to your business and they are more likely to purchase your product. Thus local SEO increases your conversion rate.

Google has set up its algorithm to find out the best local content. This algorithm considers local search rankings like the other traditional search rankings. One of the Google’s algorithms is Pigeon which considers the local listings more for ranking the site. Thus local SEO matters a lot these days than it was before.

13. Low quality links will not be Identified by Google

This is again another greatest misconception about SEO. Google tracks everything that happens in your site. It is impossible to fool them. In case you try to fool them then you will be in the danger of getting penalized by the search engines and your Page rank score will be removed or reduced.

If you have any bad sites linking to you or if you have low quality links in your site, it’s not too late. Just remove them from your site.

If you have low quality links in your site which you are not able to remove then request Google not to take such links into consideration when accessing your site.

14. Images need not be optimized

In the past it was okay to neglect the images and you can be without using alt attribute and image file names. But now on page SEO is given more importance. So avoiding the images in your site will not boost your site performance.

Search engines cannot read images on your site so you need to use alt attribute and give the images a file name. If you don’t do this then your opportunity for getting visible on the SERP’s will decrease. Here are few tips to include images properly in your site

• Always try to include information about your images in the text that you include in the page using the keywords similar to the alt text or file name
• Provide descriptive titles and captions for the images
• Try to include images only in the following format – BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP and SVG.
• The file name of your image should be related to the image itself

15. Mobile optimization strategy is not needed

Recently use of mobile friendly websites has been added to the ranking factors by Google. They have also introduced a algorithm update called “Mobilegedddon”. This update will consider the mobile friendly websites and rank them higher in search engines. If you don’t have a mobile friendly website, now it’s time to move to a modern website which can deliver a responsive experience to the users. Responsive website design will make the page adapt according to the visitors need. Responsive website will give the users best experience. This best user experience will rank your site higher and will bring more traffic to your site.

SEO Myths Conclusion

In this article we have mentioned the most common SEO Myths. But still SEO Myths is an ever changing and challenging process. Keep testing and experimenting. Make sure you stay abreast of all the changes and ensure that your site stays at the top of the search engine result page (SERP’s). Understanding the SEO Myths truths will help you to draw a more effective and efficient SEO Myths strategy.