A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and while it’s great that so many businesses are now taking an interest in SEO, it can also be damaging when so many people think of themselves as ‘SEO gurus’ when really they’ve only had a very minor amount of experience with the industry.
It’s because of this that there are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding SEO and that so many people follow bad practices completely believing themselves to be doing the best thing. Here we will look at some of these misunderstandings and at some of the biggest SEO myths. Make sure you don’t fall prey to these, and that you only take the best advice when it comes to doing your SEO.
SEO Doesn’t Work Any More
In the wake of Google Panda and Google Penguin, a lot of people who once swore by SEO are now feeling a bit betrayed by it as best practices change and as it becomes hard to predict what Google’s next move is going to be. However, this doesn’t by any means mean you should stop doing SEO. It still remains the very cheapest and easiest way for businesses and individuals without endless resources to get the word out and to compete with larger corporations and as long as you adapt and use your head you can still do SEO that will survive the majority of changes.
Your At Constant Risk of Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a real threat and in theory it could be used to take down your website. However while Google’s Disavow Links Tool seems to reaffirm the suspicion that bad links can do a lot of damage to your site, it’s also worth noting that we don’t know for sure how much of an impact few links can have on our position. I’m not saying negative SEO isn’t real, I’m just saying it’s been blown out of reasonable proportion and unless you’re very unlucky it probably doesn’t apply to you.
PR is the Best Measure of a Website’s Success
Your PR or ‘Page Rank’ is a good indicator of how much authority your site has, but that doesn’t automatically guarantee you success. For one a site with a low PR can outrank a site with a high PR on any particular SERP still, and then at the same time just because you’re getting lots of people to your site doesn’t mean that
SEO is Unscrupulous
Black hat SEO is made up of insidious spamming practices, and unfortunately this has coloured the reputation of SEO as a whole. SEO means literally ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and there’s nothing dodgy about that. There are plenty of very good SEO companies out there that use honest practices to make your site better and therefore get it to rank better with Google – you’ve just got to know which ones they are.
Keywords Are the Be All and End All of SEO
Keywords are still a part of SEO, but their power has been diminished through the algorithm updates and through the introduction of semantic search. These days synonyms are almost just as important, but most important of all is to just focus on writing great content.
Metatags Are Useful for Your Position
Apparently not any more – and word has it that metatags aren’t even indexed by Google or Bing these days. They’re still useful for the snippets that appear on the SERPs, but don’t feel the need to stuff them full of keywords.
SEO Only Applies to Google
This just isn’t true, and while I’m not saying you should invest the same energy into ranking on Bing as you do for Google, you shouldn’t ignore it either. And more to the point you also need to bear in mind that YouTube and the App Stores and even online shops like Amazon are search engines in a way. The same principles can apply and there’s a lot of money here to be made.
Image Credit:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Shaun Bishop is an expert marketing executive who has been associated with website builders ct for the last 5 years.
As Shaun stated SEO still works and it is very likely to work in the future. However, it takes more time to reap the benefits. In the past, changes made to the website require 3-4 days to be reflected in search results. Now, it takes more time. Google is doing its best to remove spam from its index.
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Frank Steiner recently posted…How to rename uncategorized category in WordPress
I think that keywords are now almost dead and it is true that SEO doesn’t work now in front of content. Nowadays thanks to Google a good quality site gets to the top of SERP itself without any need of extensive SEO methods.
I am a supporter of this change because this encourages good quality content and not those sites who invest more on SEO methods that content.
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Mahaveer recently posted…Make Your Blog Post Go ‘Gangnam Style’
SEO is definitely not dead, but we should also complement it with top notch content. Gone are the days when one could rank on the first page with spun or irrelevant content.
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Julian King recently posted…Large Shed Plans
it going more and more towards good quality and a wide variety of backlinks as well as SEO. But SEO on its own wont get you far. Some SEO experts state on site Optimization only counts for around 20% of your SERP
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Richard recently posted…Preparing your Car for the Winter Months
SEO is still thriving but it is an ever evolving industry. If you don’t keep up with the algorithm updates you could end up using strategies that are outdated.
Regarding negative SEO, it is a threat, but the better your link profile and the more trust you gain, the safer you are. If you have a weak link profile though, it is much easier to get affected by negative seo.
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Jeremy recently posted…November 10th 2012 Favorite Blog Posts
I believe SEO still works it just works differently. How differently might depend on how long you have been working online or in the SEO world. It can be helpful to stay up to date with all Google’s changes, which used to be easier a few years back. Who knows what they have in mind for changes in the future. All we can do is try to keep up, and adapt accordingly.
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Ray recently posted…YouTube Time Watched Now a Ranking Factor
Interesting article on the myths and conceptions on SEO. But one thing is that many are seeing good rankings purely based on the quality of blog posts with no links pointing to their blog or site. I therefore would really like to know if links are important or not these days.
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Shalu Sharma recently posted…Types of ghosts and haunted places in India
Hi,
After Google’s Panda and penguin updates, mostly people started think like this. but the reality is that SEO really matters and the only thing is that you should optimize your blog like a good boy and avoid illegal stuff.
Joe
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Joe Clark recently posted…Heading tags optimization for good SEO
these are fantastic tips. ill need to pass them along to some clients.
i think the thing to do is to try to keep up with the latest trends and to remember the basics
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jonathan recently posted…browser like forward and back navigation in finder
SEO tools are very useful till date. They are beneficial for internet marketing and hold the same significance like before. These myths and misconceptions people have about SEO have been explained by you clearly in the post. However, usage of keywords have been limited nowadays but they are still essential.
yeah we have got into a lot of updates from Google but however making use of SEO is one important and useful thing to be noticed when focusing to improve your blog traffic and all. your article does expose the reality and thanks for sharing those valuable information.
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aaslin recently posted…BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.1 update started rolling out
SEO is still useful and working great but it’s now more dependent on the quality of the website. By quality I mean informative and original content plus user friendly navigation so that users can easily find what they’re looking for.
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Aasma recently posted…MLM Software Freelancer Developers
Well SEO is still relevant. Hugely relevant. It’s just changing its practice really. Online promotion is bigger than ever and it doesn’t seem that it’s going to lose momentum anytime soon. The Internet will online stay to keep bringing more money to enterprises. So even if traditional SEO practices may be slowly dying, it’s just a shift of practice which aims to achieve the same outcome.
The last paragraph is nonsense. You can’t compare Google with Amazon or any App Store as a search engine. Google has the highest pedigree in this area.
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Cristian Stan recently posted…Coffee Grinder Reviews
Nowadays, SEO is full of misconceptions and smoke screens. people say keywords do not matter and that meta descriptions do not matter to the SERPs. I agree and disagree with both of those statements. While these attributes no longer matter to the Google SERPs, Keywords and meta descriptions are still used as ranking factors in some of the smaller search engines, especially on a global scale. Sometimes, I get traffic from search engines that I have never even heard of! As for meta descriptions, if you are in a close race with your competition for the first couple spots on the SERPs, then you better believe that meta descriptions can and will be a key differentiator that will drive visitors to your site and away from the competition!
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Alan recently posted…How to display multiple windows at once in Primavera P6 Release 8.2
well, i dont like this article, its so low quality written – it looks that its created only for the link ( that`s from guest blogging , right? )
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Stephen Karsch recently posted…Stephen Karsch Is Back
It’s true, SEO doesn’t = keywords. It’s nice to see that facet of SEO take a backseat, though. Focusing on quality content is going to go far no matter what kind of changes are rolled out by Google.
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Elena Anne recently posted…The Benefits of Dance Exercise
Interesting. It’s true that the importance of metatags has considerably reduced.
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Also, it’s true that one is at a constant risk of downgrade. White hat SEO is the way to go.
Nish recently posted…Why Am I Asked to Pay Interest Penalty? I am filing my return on time!
I would not be so clear about Meta tags. It should look natural, but it is a sin not to insert there Keyword!
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Clyde Hickman recently posted…How to Block Spam Computer Popups
Negative SEO is really threat to the site. Google Panda takes its action on the site and we can’t restore the lost traffic to the blog if panda hits.
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AjayUdayagiri recently posted…How To Backup Android Phone Data To Cloud
Make sure to thoroughly review the data in your Webmaster Tools accounts, from broken pages to server or crawl errors to warnings or spam alert messages. Very often, what’s initially perceived as a mistaken spam penalty is, in fact, related to accessibility issues.
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Daniel recently posted…Bad Links – How to Tackle this Problem
Good Blog sir… your blog is very helpful.. I am happy to find this post very useful for me, as it contains lot of information.
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I’m afraid some of these are not misconceptions or myths like the power of SEO. Needs a little more research into facts.
The truth is no one really knows 100% what Google likes and doesn’t like, it’s all guess work by the super SEO geeks as to what matters!
As another comment above says, just be natural and avoid any illegal (in the eyes of Google) SEO techniques, also just continue to write great content and engage with your visitors and you will see results
Great post!
Mark
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Mark recently posted…Blogging On The Move: 5 Top iPhone And iPad Apps For The Mobile Blogger
The key to a successful seo is to have a healthy (natural) link profile.
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Alex recently posted…Libo umělý nebo přirozeně identický odkazový profil?
I have dealt with spammy SEO companies. They will only hurt your site in the long run.