Search engine optimization is likely something you’ve heard about if you’re in any line of business or run a website. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to streamline organic traffic to your website by utilizing keywords, optimizing website flow, and using many location-based strategies. SEO is one of the best approaches to producing long-lasting results that positively impact your online presence in digital marketing.
With SEO–and what it is–in your mind, it’s good to know what to look for when trying to do it effectively. Educated companies make the wisest decisions, so combating misinformation is crucial to helping businesses thrive. This article aims to help you identify and avoid common SEO myths!
Common SEO Pitfalls & Why They Happen
When debunking common SEO myths, it’s vital to understand why there are so many in the first place. While every program, book, and even digital marketing pros have their own techniques that vary from strategy to strategy, avoiding fallacies is essential. Several reasons that many SEO myths continue to prevail include:
- Repetitive misinformation is getting passed around too often.
- Too much information with various biases.
- Lack of critical thinking.
- Sources seem legit but are just popular or perpetuated by charismatic personalities.
- Something is called “best practice” while ignoring crucial environmental details.
SEO and its effectiveness vary from industry to industry, location to location, and depend heavily on website optimization and content quality. However, you can increase your website’s SERP ranking by avoiding these five common myths.
Myth Number 1: The More Keywords, the Better
When you think of SEO, you probably think of keyword and location combinations used within a website’s content to rank it higher when a potential customer enters a search term into someplace like Google or Bing.
Keywords and locations absolutely play a significant role in SEO, but it’s more complex than that.
Content quality is also a major player in search engine optimization. Unfortunately, businesses or those unfamiliar with best SEO practices often assume that if you simply put as many keywords into a page of content as possible, Google will rank it better. Unfortunately, this isn’t true, and treating keywords or locations like hashtags is more likely to get your website flagged as spam.
Some sites even do “Black Hat SEO,” essentially trying to trick the web crawlers–the bots responsible for indexing content–into ranking their sites higher. Methods can include hiding white-colored keywords or links in whitespace, comment spam, and sneaky page cloaking.
It goes without saying that having your website flagged as spam is a quick way to kill traffic and ruin your efforts.
Myth Number 2: Link Quality & Link Building Don’t Matter
While “content is king,” quality checks aren’t necessary for only keyword placement and density among website content used for SEO. These quality checks are vital for something just as important: outbound and inbound linking. High-quality links can make or break your content, so it takes a measure of discretion to find some.
Of course, finding quality links isn’t always straightforward. You don’t want to be linking outwardly to competition, even if their blog post is relevant to what you’re talking about on your SEO page. Your best bet is to look up pertinent articles on high-authority, non-competition sites to have effective local SEO.
What do we mean by “high-authority”? A high-authority website is any business or news site that shows up as a trustworthy information source. Depending on your industry, you can find numerous sources for high-authority links that are relevant to your content needs.
Myth Number 3: SEO is a One-and-Done
As with all business ventures, nothing is ever easy. Search engines are constantly indexing and ranking new content, all day, every day. So when you add pages and optimizations to your website, it needs to be updated and curated consistently.
Search engine optimization is a long-haul form of digital marketing that creates some of the best organic results long-term, but it requires hard work and diligence. SEO processes must be continuously monitored, analyzed, tested, and updated to keep your content and website relevant.
This form of marketing is one of the most rewarding since the traffic garnered from naturally high-ranking sites is more meaningful. However, that means your company needs to be willing to put forth the effort to build and maintain it.
Myth Number 4: Your Primary Website Plays Little to No Role
While randomly inserted keywords shouldn’t plague landing pages and services information, there is a crucial role your website plays in SEO. The major thing that web crawlers look for on your main website is your site speed.
Visitors don’t want to deal with pages that load slowly or don’t load everything properly; this will increase your bounce rate. Additionally, web crawlers will notice if your website isn’t up to snuff and cut back on your ranking viability.
Keeping your site speed up and ensuring everything is adequately optimized is crucial to the life of your SEO campaigns.
Myth Number 5: SEO is Highly Expensive
Many would argue that SEO and the amount of time and effort it takes makes it one of the more expensive options for digital marketing, but that simply isn’t true.
On the contrary, much of the cost is variable and depends on numerous factors. For example, your industry, company size, and scope of business will increase or decrease the expense of SEO campaigns.
There are plenty of free tools that can help you create effective SEO content, but many companies outsource their SEO efforts to increase efficiency, research progress, and help with effectiveness. A dedicated digital marketing agency can help streamline and optimize everything to help you reach your goals.
Search Engine Optimization is Still a Great Choice
SEO is one of the most powerful ways a company can generate meaningful, organic traffic from people actively searching for their products and services. As a long-term marketing strategy, search engine optimization is arguably one of the most rewarding compared to classic ads or social media efforts.
If the task of well-thought-out and effective SEO is a bit too daunting, consider hiring a digital marketing agency! Optimize4Success has an excellent reputation and track record for long-term results that can help pull your business into the spotlight. As a full-service digital marketing agency, we’ll help your business elevate to new heights, track results, test what works, and capture your brand voice.
Curious about who we are and what we do? Get in touch! Optimize4Success has experts ready and willing to help with whatever you need.