SEO is one of the marketing tools that are incredibly prone to misunderstanding and misconceptions. This is due to a number of different reasons but the main reason being the fact that algorithms and search engines are continuously evolving and changing. On top of that, user behaviour is also constantly changing, and in order for search engines to keep up, they’re upgrading their algorithms to help reduce disinformation in results. This is to ensure that users get the most relevant content and optimise user-experience. While many myths are usually harmless, SEO myths can be extremely damaging to your website. By listening to and implementing these myths, you run the risk of your website getting pulled in rankings, 

Keyword Quantity>Quality:

One of the most common myths in the SEO world is to insert as many keywords into your content as you can, also known as keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is needlessly adding repeated keywords to your content, even if it makes no sense. While this did used to work before, it can lead to lowering the positioning of your website. This is because many search engines mark pages with high-density keywords as spam. This heavily reduces your chances of being ranked, doing more harm than good.

The reason why many people believe and spread this myth is because stuffing keywords into a page was the key to SEO success. A common tactic that blogs and websites used to use in the past was invisible text. This included adding a list list of keywords to your page in the same font colour as the background, making the text practically invisible to users. However, search engines like Google quickly caught on and reduced the chances of these pages ranking. 

Instead of over-optimising your page with the same keywords, I recommend conducting keyword research to find keywords that are effective. These are the ones that usually have a low search difficulty but a high volume. Once you’ve found the perfect keyword, start creating high-quality keywords that you know your audience would love to read. This will help you rank higher and helps you drive more qualified traffic to your site. 

SEO is a one-time thing:

To those looking for a one-time fix solution to their website, SEO is not one of them. SEO is not just a one-time thing that you set up and forget. As I mentioned above, the search engine algorithms are always changing (nightmare, I know!). Ensuring you’re continuously updating your website according to this will keep your website optimised and ranking well.

You should also be ready to commit time and resources to ensure the content on your site is fresh and relevant. You might be asking me why. While there are many reasons to add new and improved content on the site, the number one reason is because your competitors are doing it. And the more content your competitors are putting out the more you’ll get overshadowed in search engines. Yes, it’s a rat race, and you’re trying to hit that gold mine of cheese. Creating quality content will help you to start ranking for keywords you’ve never even ranked for before. Creating blogs, uploading FAQs, and updating the overall content on your site are just simple ways you can start creating your chapter in the large book that is search engines. Create a content strategy to help you get rid of the guessing game that is creating content. Creating high-quality content will help Google will get a better understanding of your website, and target your website to users who are looking for websites similar to yours. While it may be tedious keeping up with this, you’ll thank me later when you see an inflow of traffic every time you upload a blog. 

It’s Not Worth Going Back To Old SEO Content:

Many people are told that creating new and captivating content is the best way to start reaching those high rankings in search engines. When people hear this, they’re quick to assume that it’s not worth optimising and improving old content. While creating new content will help you boost your rankings, you shouldn’t ignore your old content. This is especially the case when a page that was once ranking highly is now appearing on page 30. Whether that be your service pages, your blogs, or SEOs, going back to them and tweaking a couple of things isn’t a complete waste of time. In fact, you could heavily boost your rankings and pull in traffic from a page that was once gathering and piling up dust. However, it is not worth the time optimising every single one of your old content. Instead you should look at recent trends within your industry, and conduct keyword research to identify which content has the potential to rank high. Since Google algorithms are always changing, I highly recommend to amend your main pages – which are usually your service and home pages – in line with these changes.

Low-volume Search Terms Are a Waste of Time and Money:

When conducting keyword research, you may be tempted to target those high-volume search terms in hopes of getting the most traffic out of them. Well, the hard truth is that when you use these keywords, you’re competing with so many other well-known businesses and websites. These well-known websites have already established a sense of trust with their audience, resulting in people being more enticed to click on their website over yours, as they see them as a trusted source. 

Targeting low-volume, specific search terms is oftentimes the better option when you’re trying to get more traffic onto your site. Low-volume often means low-competition , and the lower the competition the higher the chance of your website ranking on the first page. Targeting these keywords is also great for those looking to write a piece of content. This is because low-volume keywords are most of the time long-tail keywords. Creating content around these keywords will help to make your content incredibly specific to niche markets, which have a higher chance of converting. The low competition combined with the higher likelihood of converting due to user search intent, will benefit you more than targeting generic, high-volume keywords.

Local SEO Doesn’t Matter for online businesses:

Local SEO refers to optimising your site to target more geographically specific locations to increase your online presence and attract more local customers. However, local SEOs are not just about restaurants or beauty salons that depend on footfall from walk-in clients. Even if your business is completely online and isn’t location-specific, you can still benefit from local SEO. Creating pages on your site promoting your products to certain areas will increase the likelihood of your website being seen by your target demographic. Local SEO uses a variety of methods including optimising your Google My Business Profile, creating location-specific pages, adding your business to local directories and so much more. 

Good SEO Will Help Your Site Instantly:

While a good SEO strategy will effectively help to increase your online visibility, it may take weeks or even months for you to see significant results. You’ll need to be in it for the long haul so you won’t receive instant traffic straight away. One of the main reasons why it takes so long is because of the time taken for search engines to crawl your page. Crawling is the process in which search engines will go through your website and discover and process new content using search engine robots (also known as crawlers or spiders). Once the content on your site has been changed, it can take a few days and even weeks for it to be crawled. But with time, patience, and resilience, you’ll find yourself receiving significant returns. So, if you’re expecting immediate results, you might be in for a bit of a disappointment.

SEO is all about progress. Take steps, conduct research, and implement data you have gathered to identify what works and what doesn’t. By doing this you will find yourself climbing up steadily, to help bring you closer to your goals. A concrete SEO strategy will also include adaptability. How your website will cope with the changes in algorithms as well as what needs to be adjusted to ensure you won’t experience significant drops in your website rankings.

There is only one type of SEO:

SEO is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and there isn’t just one type of SEO. There are a range of different SEO strategies that are implemented based on your business goals, target audience, and the overall nature of your business. Effective SEO often combines elements from several types to create a comprehensive and holistic optimisation strategy.

The most common type of SEO is on-page SEO. This is the more technical side of SEO and involves optimising web pages by optimising content, meta descriptions, SEO titles, headings, etc. On-page SEO is critical for every business so don’t forget to add those image alt-texts and external links.

Off-page SEO is all about things optimising your web page beyond your website. This includes social media, link building, videos uploaded to YouTube, etc. Building high-quality backlinks will help increase traffic to your page and improve your domain authority.

The next is Local SEO. As I mentioned above, local SEO refers to optimising your site to target more geographically specific locations to increase your online presence and attract more local customers. 

E-commerce SEO is specifically for optimising online stores. This includes optimising product pages, category pages, implementing schema markups for products, etc. This helps to get your products seen giving you the chance to land some new customers.

In the world of marketing content is king (or queen as I like to call it). Creating high-quality content for the purpose of increasing website visibility also known as content SEO helps to get your website ranking high. It includes keyword research and creating compelling content that is optimised for SEO.