Top SEO Myths You Must Avoid to Safeguard Your Search Rankings

Consulting an SEO firm or SEO experts is not everything until you are fully careful about the ranking campaigns being run for your website. Don't be blindfolded by the people about the SEO techniques used for SEO purposes but you need to be also aware of the myths and facts prevalent in the SEO regime. Don't easily trust those prevailing SEO Myths surrounding SEO. Search Engine Optimization is still an important component of your online marketing campaign.

Though digital marketing has blatantly replaced the existing practices of SEO, you shouldn't underestimate it being a forgotten hero. Search Engine Optimization is still an important component of your online marketing campaign. Don't easily trust those prevailing myths surrounding SEO.

21 SEO Misconceptions to Avoid

What concerns me the most is the surging rumors of SEO being obsolete or dead, and of course, I don't endorse either of the claims. I know SEO is all set to stay here for long, even longer. If you are seriously looking to trigger SEO to improve your website visibility, it's the right time to go. But, before putting your feet into the vertical, see the list of myths that prevailed in the domain and that need to be debunked.

1. SEO Is Dead:

Whether you're an experienced SEO or a novice, you have already heard 'SEO is dead' many thousand times. Search portal Search Engine Watch has written an exhaustive article covering the topic in every detail. Of course, this is the biggest myth around this practice. And if you believe it, the rest of the article is of no use for you. No one can reject the fact that algorithms and search engines are not disappearing anytime soon. So, you can still trust SEO to ensure traffic and visibility on your website.

2. SEO Is All About Keywords

It's true, that in the past, webmasters and Search Engine Optimization geeks used to rely on keyword density in pages and posts to achieve results. It was even deemed a good practice to write articles and blogs around chosen keywords. However the advent of several new Google algorithms forced webmasters to change their strategy. Google is OK with keywords in a page/post unless it's not spam or stuffing.

Keywords are still important for Search Engine Optimization, but your focus should be on quality content and its relevance. Wordstream has published a detailed blog post on how to optimize keywords for better organic results. I still remember when Google introduced RankBrain. It was deliberately launched to compel the SEO community to have a clearer focus on content relevance and user experience, rather than the use of the exact keywords.

3. SEO Is About Being On #1

With considerable changes in SEO and its existing practices, merely securing #1 spot won't help much.I know your end goal is not just to grab the top spot, but to achieve traffic, engagement and business. Agencies may help you have a top spot in the SERPs, but that can't guarantee engagement and eventually conversions. Clients are getting cleverer than ever before. They can easily spot if a website that appears on top of the SERPs is of any value or not. Only relevant, optimized, and useful content can bring additional traffic and more engagement. #1 position just compliments it.

4. More Pages Means Greater Results

I can bet, a website with 30 pages can rank better than a website with 130 pages. The quantity of web pages hardly helps in SEO unless they deliver value to the end users. It's up to you to create as many web pages as you want, if they add value to your site.

But keep away from creating additional, useless, and fluffy pages just to impress Google and to increase your crawling from search engines. Google doesn't ever promise to get every page of your website indexed and keeps the quality factor atop. So, keep your SEO efforts aligned with the content quality and user experience.

5. Unoptimized Images are Fine

Images are very significant when we talk about user experience. Images are the building blocks of visual user experience. In the times when visual content is getting important, its optimization is something we must not miss. Though optimizing visual elements in a website is not that tough, most of the time we skip it without fearing its impact on rankings.

This is deadly. Please understand, that search engines can't understand images the way humans do. Search engines can identify images only if they carry the right description, descriptive titles, ALT tags, and captions. Henceforth, you should fill in image fields like captions, ALT text, and description when it's used in content. Properly optimized images or visual content help them become visible in search engines.

6. Mobile Optimization Is A Overrated Term

This is now an open-ended truth that mobile devices are the most used devices for online searches. They simply surpassed desktops and laptops. If your website doesn't open properly on a mobile device, or offers poor user experience, you can lose a big chunk of your traffic.

To ensure compliance with its mobile search guidelines, Google launched Mobilegeddon, its mobile search algorithm in April 2015. The algorithm was meant to penalize websites that were mobile unfriendly and tendered poor user experience. Mobile optimization is all about enhancing user experience that collectively comes from the design of the page, the responsiveness, the number of clicks, the page speed, or even the screen size.

7. Domain Age Matters

The biggest rumor I frequently come across is that the domain age of a website helps in getting the site ranked well. Time and again I've dismissed this illogical assertion made by a bunch of webmasters and SEO community members. The age of a domain isn't a ranking factor at all, though may have some advantages for the website. Domain's age may indicate that the website has been in the fore for a long and the most probably enjoying a better place.

Webmasters have always misinterpreted the domain age factor. Being a digital marketer with an experience of over 15 years in the digital marketing backyard, I firmly refuse any notion that endorses domain age as a ranking factor. Remember, an older domain name can't speak for either quality and trustworthiness of a website. What matters the most are quality backlinks to the website and the content that delivers value to the users.

8. Region-Specific Domains Help In Ranking

This is again an inflated claim made by certain webmasters and marketers. Buying a region specific domain like .us, .ca or .au may help pull local buyers in the net but it hardly gives any ranking boost. Search engines, especially Google are getting smarter in tracking if the search engine is tricked for ranking. I am uttering again that Google only pats your back if the information on the website is valuable, to the point, and able to educate the people.

9. Domain Name With Keyword Outranks

This is again a much propagated farce and one of the blatant SEO myths you shouldn't consider seriously. Undoubtedly, keywords play an important role in ranking. Keywords spread across and placed well in web pages and source codes help websites gain visibility and ranking, but that isn't necessarily true if you put keywords in the domain name. A keyword-stuffed domain name may give an idea about the offerings, but a competitor's website without keywords in a domain name may beat yours in search rankings if it's better in terms of content and user experience.

10. Keyword Rich Content Brings Ranking

A half-truth indeed. Content has been very important ever since search engine optimization arrived, and keywords complemented it. This might have been the case back in the early years, but after Google's Panda and Penguin updates, things have been drastically changed. Search engine optimization is a combined process involving several strategies weaved and compiled together.

Though keywords are integral to that combo, it alone couldn't bring that much magic as of now. Despite focusing solely on keyword-rich content, it's important to branch out and use all aspects of SEO. Eventually, after the latest Google Panda update, stuffing keywords in content might invite Google penalties and drop in rankings.

12. Sitemap Is Important To Ranking

Flush this SEO myth out of your mind that Sitemaps anyway help improve search rankings, even Google denies it. A concise sitemap does help Google in easier indexing of your website, nothing else. An easy-to-index website doesn't necessarily get a boost in search ranking across the search engines.

13. User Experience And Website Navigation Doesn't help

A couple of years back, Google focused on websites that had keyword-rich content and were well-optimized. But now, things have changed to a greater extent. Lately, Google has started considering website navigation and user experience as important ranking factors. Now, a website that presents visitors a valuable experience by putting a user-friendly website navigation, gets more traffic and value in the rankings. Better navigation provides a path to your visitors to let them get around easily on the website.

14. Design Comes First And Then SEO

Your website designer would always suggest you finish the design first and then move to the SEO part. The matter of fact is that as soon you go live with your basic website design and content, Google starts to index your website. So, it would be better to do some basic website optimization before publishing the website. Make sure whatever the amount of content your website is going live with is unique and must not be taken from other websites.

17. SEO Landing Page In Addition To The Home Page

Many SEO people argue about their client's desire to add SEO-rich landing page in addition to the basic home page in the primary website. This rare request is only beneficial in the case of Google Adwords campaigns and trust me it's irrelevant in the case of organic SEO. If a landing page already exists in your website don't waste your energy in adding others.

18. Optimizing One Keyword Per Page Helps

Many SEO people believe that optimizing a web page on a single keyword benefits as it allows an opportunity to put clear focus on that one keyword phrase. Let's think out of the bottle. Many content writers believe that writing a web page to promote a single keyword troubles them a lot. They find it difficult to allow a natural flow of the content across the page. So, rather than fighting for a single keyword per page, invite 2 or 3 keywords in the page to be optimized. It helps you to have more targeted traffic for sure.

19. HTML Tables in Pages are Bad

The very irritating notion that amuses me. Several times I come to know from SEO people to avoid using HTML since they feel that this could prevent search engine crawlers from crawling pages in complete efficiency. No need to panic. In no way does a HTML-made table choke the search engines in their crawling process.

20. Image Links Don't Help

Another miss-assumption that badly affects your website's visibility prospects is speculations over the induction of image links in the website. You must not spoil the beauty of your websites by removing images with proper links and navigation structures. All you have to consider is using the same words you will use in your anchor text links in your image alt attribute.

21. Top Ranking Can Be Assured

SEO companies usually publish ads that guarantee top and sometimes #1 rankings in popular search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Certainly, this assertion has no breath as search engine algorithms could only be followed not concurred. It simply means that with good and performed SEO strategies, an SEO firm or an SEO expert could rank you on top, however when it comes to guaranteeing a top position in the search engines, it is merely possible.

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