SEO Myths You Should Ignore

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Ah, myths.

From goldfishes having 3-second memory spans, to the 7 years it takes chewing gum to go through your body’s digestive system.

All of us will have grown up with similar myths, many of them we even believed (I can’t lie, I researched common myths and I am mind blown by some of them that are not true). However, certain beliefs have now ventured into the world of SEO.

In this article, I am going to go through just a couple of myths about the industry that you need to avoid for continued success.

“Links Don’t Matter”

Writing that headline was painful. Links don’t matter? Who even started that idea? 

As someone who works in the outreach and link building sector, I cannot shout loud enough about how important links are, whether that be internal links or external, follow or no-follow, links provide positive results for your website.

In fact, links are known to be one of Google’s top-ranking factors and this statement is not vanishing anywhere, anytime soon.

When looking at outbound links, not only do they navigate external audiences to reach your site, but search engines will crawl through your site to see what link building you have achieved through your efforts. Efforts being the main focal point.

Link building helps search engines know that you’re putting the effort in to have your content supporting an external site. Your valuable information that’s being added onto other sites provides the details they need to further enhance their own information, or the ideal solution if their audience is looking for that particular industry knowledge and you provide all of this, through the click of a link.

Outreach, PR, link reclamation, resource page linking, the list goes on. The link building industry is booming to say the least. Just look at the online news & industry blogs and you’ll see.

“I Only Need One Keyword For My Content”

No my friend, you can do better than one.

When analysing and optimising content, a lot of people tend to focus on just one keyword and don’t consider choosing secondary supporting keywords to back up their primary choice.

Choosing a keyword is a great place to start, but you need other relative phrases that can help transform the content and elevate those all-important rankings.

Personally, I would recommend that you choose one primary keyword you want to focus your efforts on, then research any related keywords that will work perfectly within your content and will flow naturally. These supporting keywords are more commonly the typical search queries that people type into their search engine for a quick answer.

A fantastic tool for headline & longer tail secondary keywords is Answer The Public.

Although, there is a myth on the complete other end of the spectrum…

“The More Keyword Stuffing I Do, The Better”

Isn’t keyword stuffing just a horrible phrase? The only time I want to see stuffing is when it’s on my Christmas dinner.

When you are implementing your keywords within your content, you want the keywords to flow naturally. Do not add them in every sentence, otherwise, your keyword choice will look as obvious as when my face gleams when my Christmas dinner arrives.

Instead, with your content, you always want the main focus to be the USP’s and the benefits of what you have to offer, over your competitors. A great idea could be that you write the content beforehand and analyse keywords that are similar to the phrases you have already chosen within your premade content.

Using too many keywords can fall under a black hat SEO technique, which is something you must avoid.

The next time you go to optimise your content, remember not to add a keyword in your content if it will not work, either adapt to a way it will fit for its purpose or simply have a fewer keywords. However, like I touched on before, using long-form, secondary keywords can be the ideal solution, as they can work as your natural keyword placements.

“Meta Doesn’t Matter”

As meta being the very first piece of information a searcher views, I am slightly confused about how meta is not important.

If you are unsure of what meta is, it is simply the main headline and description of each listing on search, here is an example.

The blue headline is the meta title and the small text underneath is the description.

The meta title and description are the perfect places to add your chosen primary keywords. When looking at the meta from Gymsharks women’s clothing range, you can easily see they have focused their efforts on “women’s gym clothing” & “gym & fitness wear” this already shows to the search engine, but also the searcher instantly, what they provide.

One of the beginning points to any SEO journey is meta optimisation, so how can they not matter? If you decide to not bother with this essential element, then you will not rank as highly as you would like to, as they help determine the relevancy of the page and the specific query.

“SEO Is Dead”

Oh, my heart – These myths are too much.

SEO is far from dead, in all honesty, I don’t think I have ever seen it look more alive and kicking.

In the words of Neil Patel, I could not summarise the importance of organic rankings any better than this – 

“Do you know how many searches take place on Google each day?

Roughly 5.6 billion searches per day.

That’s roughly 2 trillion searches each year.

Although that’s a lot of searches, there is also a lot of content being created.

There are roughly a billion blogs on the web.”

These staggering statistics are just from the insights of Google alone, each day over 5.6 billion searches are made worldwide, and without the SEO efforts you implement onto your site, guess who is going to see you on the top listings on search?

You guessed it, no one.

Every single day, at least one person within the billions will be looking for the answers, services or products that your specific business provides. If you don’t put in the effort to ensure that you are ranking top, then these potential engagements are not going to happen, Your competitors, who take the time to focus on their SEO efforts, will be snatching the opportunity.

Do you want this happening to your business? No, of course you don’t.

Anyone who works in the SEO industry will constantly be taking the time to see how they can outgrow competitors and will refine their work to offer what the people really want.

So, to whoever stated “SEO is dead” – You have never been more wrong.

And just like that, the end is here.

SEO myths have become more apparent. Analysing what is true and what isn’t is important, as it could be the reason you are not ranking above your competitors.
If you would like to find out more information or any advice, then please feel free to get in touch, by sending an email to  holly@seotrafficlab.com.