Search engine optimization is not as difficult as many try to make you believe. Search engine traffic is better, simple and less costly strategy than paid search or social media traffic. If you have created an in-depth and unique content, then you should follow smart SEO strategy, and stop believing these 9 SEO myths.
1. SEO Is Dead
As long there are search engines, SEO is here to stay. It is true that algorithms of search engines keep upgrading, and SEO has to change accordingly. Many old SEO practices like keyword have to make way for new straggles. But, SEO is not going to dies. Keyword placement continues to be as important as ever.
The BERT algorithm (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), the latest update from Google — BERT — will help the search engine better understand the search queries.
That means that you need to make necessary changes in your SEO strategy. Instead of keyword stuffing, you have to focus on creating quality content, and this content must be different from the existing ones.
2. SEO Is A One Time Activity
SEO is not a one time investment. Search Engine Optimization is a never ending process. Placing keywords, creating backlinks, optimizing your content, all these SEO practices should never stop.
Just discontinue your SEO activities, and see how website’s ranking drops.
4. Keyword Targeting Has Become Irrelevant
Hummingbird has not rendered keyword targeting irrelevant. Keywords are still showing on Google’s first page. This means that keyword targeting is still an important SEO practice. , it’s an indication that they still matter.
Hummingbird has actually made Keyword research a simplified process, wherein you need not to worry about about following a certain keyword ratio. Focusing on the intent of search queries is more important.
For many social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube keyword targeting is one of the important tools to meet users’ needs.
5. XML Sitemap Boosts Search Rankings
Can a sitemap boost your website’s ranking? Without XML sitemap, your website will not be a crawlable site. Its helps your site index quickly. However, it plays no role in booting your search ranking.
With XML sitemap, your new post, or updated post, get submitted to Google and other search engines quickly. Sitemaps are like an aid. Without it, you may not be able to convey all the information that your site contains to search engines.
XML sitemap makes your site more visible.
6. Meta Tags Don’t Matter
Meta tags are HTML tags that appear in between the opening and closing <head> tags. Meta tags can be divided into three parts: the SEO title tag, meta description, meta keyword. They’re used to show preview snippets for a specific webpage in the search results.
Meta tags are not one of the many factors Google uses for page ranking. Then, why should you spend some time on writing meta description and meta title?
Well, meta tags help your search results look attractive. Users are more willing to click on the search preview which conveys all the required information.
7. Top-Level Domains Improve Rankings
.com is more popular than .co, .biz or .guru. Most search users recognize .com, but get confused when they come across something new.
When you type any keyword phrase into Google search, you are likely to find more than 90 per cent of search results with .com domain names.
However, you must remember that top-level domains don’t improve your site’s rankings.
8. Focusing On Quality Content Is All That We Need
Nobody denies the importance of having quality content. But, this is not enough. Even the best connect needs to be optimized.
There are many websites whose content maybe as good as yours. Other sites may have content which may not be as good as yours. But they will be able to rank well on Google. They will be able to get get traffic because they have optimized their content around relevant keywords.
9. Google Penalizes Duplicate Content
For e-commerce website, duplicate content is a major issue. Many of them struggle to write descriptions which are not used on countless other websites. However, duplicate content does not get penalized. When there are multiple pieces of same content available on many sites, it gets tough for Google to determine which version is more relevant.