The world of SEO is constantly evolving. It’s no longer about keyword stuffing and manual link building—that was the past, and now it’s about content marketing and social media optimization. But there are still some myths floating around that can trip up even the most experienced marketers. So we decided to round up 10 common beliefs about search engine optimization (SEO) and bust them:
There’s a magic bullet to optimal organic search results.
There is no “magic bullet” to optimize your organic search results. It’s a process and you can’t just do a few things and expect everything to be perfect. You need to test, monitor, and iterate over time in order to achieve optimal results.
There are many factors that affect how well your site ranks in Google searches:
- Your business goals
- The content on your website (content quality)
- How well you link out from other sites (backlinks)
Content needs to be keyword optimized.
- You need to write for people, not search engines.
- You need to write for your audience, not just robots.
- You need to write for users, not just robots.
These three things are important because they help you create content that is interesting and relevant enough for a human being on the other side of the screen (or in front of their computer screen), but also optimized so search engines can understand what you’re trying to say and rank your site higher than others’ sites with similar keywords or phrases in their titles/content
Meta tags are no longer relevant.
Many people think that meta tags are no longer relevant, but they’re not. Meta tags are used by search engines to index content and understand how to rank it. They help search engines understand where your content lives and how it relates to other pages on the web.
So while meta tags may have been replaced by things like Schema.org markup, they still play an important role in helping Google & co understand what you’re trying to say about a particular topic or product type (e-commerce site vs blog post vs recipe).
Links aren’t important anymore.
The link is the most important ranking factor.
It’s true that links are no longer as important as they once were, but they still play an important role in your search rankings. Links are still a measure of authority and trust, two very valuable assets that can help boost your site’s visibility on the web.
Keywords are the only thing that matter in SEO.
Keywords are important, but they’re not the only thing that matters in SEO. There are other factors that contribute to a website’s success, such as user experience and mobile experience.
The keyword research process is just one part of an overall strategy for improving your site’s visibility on search engines. You can use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner or Moz Pro to find out which words people use most often when searching for certain topics and then create content around those topics using those keywords (and more). But there are many other ways you can improve user experience by improving the quality of your site through things like responsive design, faster loading speeds and better search results from Google!
Social media doesn’t affect SEO rankings.
Social media is a great way to build brand awareness and engagement. If you have a blog that is focused on the same topics as your social media accounts, it can be used as leverage in SEO rankings. For example, if you are sharing links on Facebook about how not to get hacked by online criminals, this will help show Google how important these types of sites are for their users’ security.
In addition to building links from social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn (which we’ll talk about later), there are other ways that social media can help with SEO ranking:
- Social networks can be used by website owners as tools for creating content that helps drive traffic back into their sites. They also allow influencers within the community where they’re active (such as bloggers) access information such as which posts perform well or receive high levels of engagement from readership – giving them insights into what works best based on past experience working with similar brands/companies.”
Content has no effect on SEO results.
Content is the most important part of SEO. Your content clearly explains what your website does, and why it’s relevant to the user. It helps search engines understand what you have to offer.
The best way to create good content is by writing about things that matter: what makes your site unique, how it affects people’s lives and how it can help them solve problems or make them feel better.
Blogging has little impact on SEO.
According to some SEO experts, blogging has little impact on your SEO. This is because the effort you put into a blog post can be easily replaced by Google’s algorithm, which factors in a variety of other factors when determining how relevant your site is to its users.
While this may be true in theory, there are still many benefits to creating great content that attract search engine traffic and links back to your site—even if it doesn’t rank as highly as other sites on Google’s index.
Here are just some of the ways blogging can help improve your rankings:
Duplicate content on your site kills your SEO ranking.
Duplicate content is a problem, but it can also be a boon. If you have duplicate content on your website, use canonical tags to point to the most relevant page of your site. Canonical tags make sure that search engines know which version of a particular piece of information belongs on the first page—and not necessarily in every single section of your site.
It’s important to remember that when you do this, it may affect how well Google loves or hates certain keywords or pages within these areas (depending on how many duplicates there are).
Not all of the common beliefs about SEO are true, and not all of them will help you rank better in search engines
Not all of the common beliefs about SEO are true, and not all of them will help you rank better in search engines. For example, it’s important to have a website that is easy to navigate. This means that your site should be easy to find and read with minimal effort on the part of the user.
Another myth is that having an effective title tag can be helpful for ranking well in Google; however, this isn’t always true because there are many factors involved when determining how well something ranks in search engines like Google.
The most important thing to remember is that while some of these myths are true, they don’t necessarily mean that you should give up on any tactics that might work for your site. It’s also worth keeping in mind how long it takes for a myth to die out—or at least be disproven: even though the “social media doesn’t affect SEO rankings” myth has been debunked over and over again, people still fall for it every day! So don’t let anyone tell you what works or what doesn’t work because they don’t know anything about SEO. They just want more clicks and page views so they can make money off ads
