Top 10 Biggest SEO Myths Demystified

With so many changes occurring in Google’s algorithms and parameters, it’s becoming harder and harder to tell truth from fiction. What works today, might not work tomorrow, and SEO myths specialists are becoming increasingly agitated.

There are also many online articles that talk about the perfect SEO strategy but are literally crawling with mistakes or outdated data.

The level of misinformation on the internet has eventually led to the invention and perpetuation of several bizarre SEO myths. Let’s take a look at 10 SEO Myths that were busted.

1. SEO is a One Time Thing

This is probably the most widespread misconception. Countless business people believe that they can pay a digital agency once in their life, to create a decent website, and it will rank well forever. This is false.

The internet is continuously changing, and so should an SEO campaign, to rival that of a competitor’s. SEO must always be looked at and updated to match the rest of the internet.

If you think this, then you have been hiding under a rock for the past five years. While it may be true that thousands of spammy links on obscure sites used to work a few years back, this is certainly not the case now.

Nobody likes paid links or link farms, except, of course, those who are trying to manipulate the search engine. You need links, but they don’t have to be included in every sentence.

SEO is All About the Quantity of Links

At the moment, it’s more about the quality of links than the quantity. Inbound and outbound links should be found in moderation, and they should be relevant to your content. Also, links to credible sources will increase the overall performance of your site.

3. PageRank is the Most Important / Useless Metric

There has been a lot of heated discussion on the topic of PageRank. A while back it was considered the most important metric when trying to determine a website’s credibility.

At present, many SEO specialists believe that it is no longer useful. Both of these SEO myths are false. While Page Rank is not the most important parameter, it is still one of the over 200 parameters that determine where your website will turn up on SERPs. A page rank of 3 or above is recommended.

4. SEO Campaigns are too Expensive

Granted, hiring a digital agency or SEO expert might cost you a few hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. However, you can always knock out your local SEO in a few hours, and hire an expert for maintenance and consultant help. It is usually better to pay for a service than to jeopardize your online success with newbie mistakes.

5. Meta Keywords Help With Rankings

This myth has been circulating online for what seems like forever. Sure, keyword meta-tags were important for the first meta-search engines that analyzed and stored an entire page, but nowadays, they have evolved and are able to extract keywords of the page without using meta keywords.

5. Meta Tags

Meta keywords stopped being useful for rankings when shady gentlemen decided to stuff them with keywords. Google has made it crystal clear that they do not intend on using the meta-tag. Its only purpose is to offer additional information about the page.

6. Duplicate Content Will Result in Penalties

There are so many articles online that stress the importance of removing duplicate content from a page, as it will lead to bans. Luckily for us, it is not true.

Related:- Top 10 Best Link Building Tools On The Market

Duplicate content may cause problems for page indexing and PageRank distribution, but you won’t receive penalties for it. Read more about this here.

7. High Keyword Density Improves Rankings

Tons of so-called SEO experts suggest that having a high keyword density will result in better rankings. Although it is important to use targeted keywords within an article, they should not be stuffed, because Google’s Hummingbird can now analyze specific pages.

In order to advance through SERPs, one must use a combination of keywords within the text, to naturally increase keyword density.

Here’s another interesting SEO myth that should be resolved. When a link is do-follow, the crawler will treat it as a vote of popularity on a subject, and pass the Page Rank. On the other hand, when it is no-follow, the spider will use the link as a highway, find new content, and index it.

Google has stated that “in general, we don’t follow them”. In other words, Google does not transfer Page-rank or anchor text across these links.

9. No-Following Improves the Page Rank Distribution

9. No Follow Links

A recent algorithmic update changed the way that rel=nofollow works. Simply put, it evaporates the amount of PageRank that does not pass through no-follow links. This means no more link juice for webmasters. In order to keep control over Page Rank, you should use the Page Rank Sculpting technique.

10. SEO Can be Done Overnight

Every now and then, a weird client appears who wants to rank his website overnight. It’s impossible. In order to improve SEO and position in SERPs, one must constantly invest in social media, compelling content and ethical SEO practices. It may take months until they obtain a decent position on Google’s result pages.

Let us know from your own experience or various tests are done online if you have busted other myths. Will love to find out more.

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