Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the core components of a digital marketing strategy. 16% of marketers consider it to be their biggest challenge. It takes time, effort, and consistency to get right. Furthermore, SEO is constantly changing.
As a complex and frankly, vast aspect of marketing, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of confusion surrounding SEO. Depending on who you ask, the perfect approach can sound very different.
In reality, SEO myths are rampant. Its ever-developing nature and new algorithms don’t help.
This article aims to dispel the misinformation surrounding SEO that could lead you down the wrong path. Regardless of your digital marketing goals, after reading this, you’ll be in a better place to reach them.
12 SEO Myths Debunked
If you’ve ever wondered why you find so much contradictory information about SEO, here’s the deal.
In a nutshell, we don’t know precisely how search engines operate. To boot, they’re constantly evolving their algorithms and systems, meaning certain information may become obsolete overnight.
Leading SEO professionals must stay up to date on the latest search engine developments and perform tests to gain the best understanding possible. If they don’t or happen to misinterpret something, they could end up giving out false information. This is how plenty of SEO myths originate.
Whether it’s from outdated information, misunderstanding a search engine, a lack of testing, or otherwise, myths exist.
Below, you’ll find 12 of the most important SEO inaccuracies that you should be aware of.
Let’s get into them.
#1 SEO is a one-off responsibility
With tricky tasks, it’s always nice to get them out of the way as soon as possible. For many businesses, SEO falls into this category.
Unfortunately, SEO is not a one-off responsibility. It involves upkeep, and you must continually update your website’s content and structure as the algorithms develop.
The good news is that putting in solid foundations and creating an SEO strategy can set you up for success.
After that, performance monitoring and making appropriate updates (ensuring content is relevant) help make sure your website remains optimized.
For example, your blog posts may have been optimized with keywords and best practices when they were written. However, how internet users searched for this type of content may have changed. Or, the search engines may have adjusted how content is being found. Therefore, you’ll have to update your blogs.
The nature of the SEO game is that it is a gradual progression.
Through consistently and diligently improving their content, working on valuable backlinks (more on that later), and keeping up with technical website maintenance, this post on certificates of business insurance went from not ranking at all to grabbing the 7th position on search engines (which means appearing on page 1 of Google!).
#2 All backlinks are useful
Backlinks are important for SEO. Essentially, they’re signs of approval from one website to another, signaling to search engines that the linked sites are useful and reliable. This can cause the sites to rank better.
The problem here is that some marketers then believe that the more backlinks you have, the better, and that all backlinks are useful. This isn’t the case.
Not all backlinks are considered equal. Links must pass search engine equity for them to be deemed reputable and relevant.
The key is to use high-authority backlinks that add value to your target audience. A single one of these will help your website’s SEO by providing more than a dozen links to spam websites that are not relevant to your business.
If you want to drive traffic to your website, SEO isn’t the only method, other methods like referrals, social media, email marketing, paid advertising or adding a QR code to scan near your front desk are all great ways to aid those SEO efforts.
So, avoid trying to cheat the system by stuffing your content full of irrelevant links to unrelated websites.
#3 Long-form content is always the best option
One of the most prominent SEO myths is that long-form content always outperforms short-form content on search engines (mainly Google). This is a perfect example of misinterpreting or misconstruing the information.
According to the Semrush content marketing report, articles that exceed 1,100 words perform better with regard to organic search. However, when you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that word count isn’t the distinguishing factor.
Articles that thoroughly cover a topic perform best. 1,100 happens to be the number that most of these pieces of content come to.
A 900-word article that comprehensively deals with a topic is likely to rank better than a 3,000-word piece that doesn’t hit the key points.
If you’re working on a blog post, forget about hitting a minimum word count. Instead, make sure that your content serves your potential customers. Include all the relevant information and link to other authority sites that relate to the reader.
Other important elements include an accurate title, relevant headings and subheadings, correct and up-to-date information, keywords (included naturally), and a proper structure. Mix in bullet points, images, lists, and space to make your content scannable and digestible.
FYI: StoryChief eliminates the need for various tools such as social media tools, automation tools, AI tools, SEO tools, and analytics tools. Create a free account and start publishing today. 🙌
#4 Good SEO has an immediate impact
It’s a common myth that SEO work will take effect immediately, resulting in thousands or millions of more page views overnight. Sure, SEO is important and should set you up for consistent success in the long run, but the results aren’t always linear.
You may have read about consultants who guarantee fast results from SEO. This is a sales tactic.
These agencies highlight hand-picked metrics or results to make you think you’re getting immediate results. In reality, these won’t have the long-term impact you want. While SEO can be effective immediately, it’s not guaranteed.
#5 Anything other than a #1 rank is an SEO failure
The main point of SEO is to improve your website’s rank and attract more of the right customers. Your goal is likely to be to rank number one on Google or another search engine. However, if you don’t achieve it, you’re not failing.
SEO strategies often take time to come into effect. You may not see results for several weeks or months. Even so, there’s no guarantee of top spot.
It’s possible to improve organic search rankings with campaign adjustments, but it’s not an exact science. You can still hit your traffic targets, conversions, registrations, etc. without hitting the top rank.
Don’t fixate on your position on the Google results page. Look deeper into the data. From here, make sure your content and information pages align with the search intent of your audience. With time, your SEO performance should improve.
#6 Daily blogging is essential
Close to 25% of top blog websites indeed post daily content. It’s also true that poor-performing blogs generally publish with less frequency. With this in mind, it’s understandable that marketers put two and two together (but ended up with five).
This is a classic case of correlation rather than causation. There was a time when Google favored new content because they thought the information would be more relevant or accurate. However, the algorithm has since been updated and works more holistically.
Posting every day just to make sure your site has new content won’t necessarily make it rank better. However, if you produce quality, well-researched, and useful blogs less often, you’ll likely see SEO improvements.
#7 Domain authority influences ranking
The term domain authority gets thrown around a lot in SEO discussions. It refers to the trustworthiness of a site.
Several third-party websites have their own scoring criteria, including Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic. These sites consider their scores to be an indication of how likely a website is to rank.
The reality is that the domain authority score isn’t a ranking factor. In the past, Google used a link algorithm called PageRank to denote a webpage’s importance. The PageRank score, out of 10, was displayed on Google’s toolbar. However, it hasn’t been used for more than a decade.
Google’s John Mueller confirmed this, stating Google keeps its metrics “as granular as possible”.
Again, you can draw correlations between rank and authority scores, but causation isn’t a factor.
#8 Domain age influences ranking
It’s easy to assume that the older the website, the more likely it is to rank. If you do a basic test with this mindset, you might find that old domains do, in fact, rank well.
However, this has been debunked by Google. Domain age does not help with rank whatsoever.
The reason behind this myth is simple. Older websites have had more time to perfect their SEO strategy. Newer websites may not have had the time to see similar results, even with good SEO practices.
#9 Duplicate content is always penalized
The duplicate content debate is contentious among marketers. Plenty argue that duplicate content (e.g. pages that are the same or very similar) are penalized by search engines when it comes to search engine results pages (SERPs).
On the Google Search Central blog, it specifically says that duplicate content isn’t penalized unless it’s created to be deceptive and manipulate search engines. That said, whatever your reasons are for duplicating pages, it’s important to proceed with caution.
Search engines may not know which page your primary content is, leading to a lower ranking for your page and its duplicates. Where possible, you should avoid duplicating content.
#10 LSI keywords improve ranking
Latent semantic indexing (LSI) is where search engines analyze the text and determine if there are relationships between words. This doesn’t refer to synonyms. Rather it identifies if words are linked thematically.
For example, an LSI keyword for “car” might be “engine”. However, “automobile” would not be an LSI keyword because it’s a synonym.
Sprinkling LSI keywords through text is believed by some marketers to boost SEO performance. This is a myth. Search engines are more concerned with search intent.
Marketers are encouraged to create genuinely useful and thorough content with naturally integrated semantic keywords.
#11 PPC advertising boosts search rankings
SEO isn’t a pay-to-play system model. Just because you spend money with Google for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, it doesn’t mean that your website will be looked upon favorably. The same goes for all major search engines.
Organic search algorithms are separate from paid ones. The data used for PPC ads has no direct influence on your organic rank. However, you can leverage paid ads to benefit organic search. If this is something you’d be interested in, check out our article on PPC.
#12 There is a clear blueprint for SEO
Marketing agencies try to convince clients that there’s a clear blueprint for SEO and that they can solve your problems using a tried and tested approach. This is categorically false.
There are best practices but these change as quickly as the weather. The ever-changing nature of SEO is what makes it so tricky.
For the most part, success in SEO comes down to following the best practices, trial and error, frequent testing, and staying up to date with updates from popular search engines.
Hiring an agency or SEO professional can be a smart move. However, it’s important to choose the right one. Be wary of any organization promising immediate and lasting results.
Final thoughts: Approach with caution
We covered some of the most common SEO myths out there but unfortunately, there are many more. And they’re likely to stick around. With this in mind, a secondary goal of this article is to help you recognize myths. Many follow the same pattern.
If you come across SEO advice that seems questionable, consider whether it could be correlation rather than causation. Check your sources and research whether Google covers the topic directly. Finally, check how old the information is. One algorithm update can change the validity of an SEO tip in a second.
With this mindset, we’re sure you’ll be able to sniff out the next SEO myth you come across.
Keep an eye on StoryChief.io for further SEO articles, marketing advice, strategies, and more.
