Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important aspect of any brand’s online presence. However, there are a lot of misconceptions floating around out there. From unscrupulous SEO companies to well-meaning but misinformed individuals, you need to know what to listen to and what to discard.
Many SEO myths come from a misunderstanding of Google’s algorithms or are perhaps they were once true, but the industry has moved on a lot since then.
Great SEO takes time and rather than trying to go for a quick fix, you need to work at it consistently to get the results.
Here are some of the most commons misconceptions you hear about SEO.
Links are better than content
This is one of the lingering misconceptions that used to be true. Links used to have a lot of value when it came to search engine rankings and your overall marketing efforts.
Over time, Google has developed its policies to focus on the quality of content, rather than just backlinks. While backlinks are still one of the most important factors, they can’t be viewed in isolation. Good quality content, that is not simply there for keyword stuffing will get you far. Similarly, high-quality relevant links have more impact than many poor quality ones. A good quality SEO company like unravelseo.com can help you to plan your content and link building strategy.
SEO can be done and then forgotten about
Thinking of SEO as a one-off project isn’t going to get you far at all. It needs to be constantly worked at. You’re soon going to fall behind if you stop. Soon your competitors will be catching up (or zooming ahead), you’ll experience backlink attrition and your organic traffic will start decreasing.
Social signals don’t influence SEO
Do likes and shares on social engagement improve your SEO? This one is a bit trickier when it comes to definitively saying yes or no. Technically, Google does not take social signals into account when forming its rankings. So while they are not classed as a direct ranking factor, numerous research studies have shown that brands with more social signals perform better on Google.
This is usually down to better social engagements leads to more interacting with and sharing of content which builds traffic.
Your site is penalized for duplicate content
While copying content isn’t ideal, there are a number of reasons why it might happen (nefarious or otherwise). It’s common to hear that your site will be penalized by Google, like some kind of judge handing down a sentence.
Google can manually remove sites from their index for a number of reasons, and this is something that you’ll be notified about through your search console. What will most often happen is that the page with the particular content on will be suppressed in the search results because Google doesn’t want to show multiple results with the same content.
While copying content might land you in trouble from a copyright perspective, it’s not often it leads to an outright manual ban on your entire site from Google.
Alt tags don’t mean anything
Images are an important part of the online experience. When a search engine looks at your site, they can’t see these images so they need some way of knowing what’s there. That’s where an alt tag comes in.
Accurate alt tags are good for people with accessibility issues. An alt tag should include a good description of the image and a keyword.
You shouldn’t use tabbed content
Google themselves has denied that having tabbed content on your page is detrimental to your rankings. Sites like Wikipedia depend on tabbing to make their pages easily navigable and prevent people from having to scroll ad infinitum to find anything.
If your content can be viewed in HTML, it’s not classed as hidden and will be read by the search engines as if it were normal, untabbed content and so wouldn’t be classed as cloaking information.
You need long content to rank
It is generally true that the top content on a given Google search result tends to be longer. But that’s not the same as being at the top because it is longer. Top ranking content is typically better written, more detailed, and has great on-page SEO. Simply producing long-form articles of poor quality isn’t going to get you anywhere.
You can only rank for new content
Yes, Google does like topics on trending content, but that is not the be-all and end-all of the ranking. The simple act of producing new content doesn’t automatically send large amounts of traffic to your site rather than to a well-written and optimized, older post.
Domain age matters
The internet is full of people who will tell you that the longer a domain has been around, the higher it will rank simply because of its age. Again, this isn’t true and what is counted is the age of the site, not just the domain.
Older sites are more likely to have more content and backlinks, which will help in ranking.
Spending money on PPC helps your organic rankings
The opinion is divided on this one. Many SEOs think that Google gives preference to those brands spending money on paid advertising. Google has denied this and any evidence is anecdotal.
It is thought that people are more likely to click through organic search results after already seeing brand advertising. This increases organic traffic click-throughs and may go some way to explaining why many believe that paying for ads will improve your rankings.
So what’s more important, content or SEO?
Many of Google’s updates over recent years have been geared towards promoting relevant, well-written content that users want to engage with. So it’s a good idea to concentrate on creating content for people, not for algorithms. But as brilliant as your content may be, you also have to give some consideration to SEO tactics when planning and writing your content.
If your business relies on being found on search engines or converting traffic, then you are going to need to engage with an SEO specialist or agency in order to start seeing the benefits of sustained SEO efforts.
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