Buying into common SEO myths can undermine your efforts towards optimization, hurt good SEO, and ultimately have a negative impact on your business. Bad and/or dated SEO tactics often make for a bad website – they also add up to costly missed business opportunities.
If you’re entirely new to the world of digital marketing, you may find yourself asking “what is search engine optimization?” more commonly referred to as SEO. SEO is the process of getting free, organic search traffic to your website by ranking in the top spots on the search engine results page (SERPs).
Chances are, if you have a website, you’ve at least heard this term tossed around. Maybe you even have a few misconceptions of your own. If you’re interested in the health of your website and the growth of your business, you need, at the very least, accurate SEO information. In that spirit, the team at Baal & Spots is here to fill you in on what we believe to be the 10 most common SEO misconceptions.
1. It’s too late to start incorporating SEO
While it’s true that SEO has gotten increasingly competitive over the years, having a successful SEO strategy is still just as important (and as achievable!) as ever.
Although it might be harder for a brand new website to take the top spot from large, established sites for highly competitive keywords, that doesn’t mean that your site can’t achieve strong rank for strategic keywords.
It all depends on how you approach your SEO strategy and there are still plenty of ways you can make your website competitive on Google such as targeting less competitive but highly searched long-tail keywords, optimizing your title tags, meta descriptions, and alt texts, using location-centered search terms, and more.
Need further convincing on the importance of incorporating SEO into your digital marketing strategy? According to recent data, increasing your site’s positioning from the second spot to the first organic position of search results can increase your click-through rate (CTR) by 21.2%. Yup, moving up even just one position can have that big of an impact on the number of users navigating to your site versus your competitors. This is the type of traffic that investing in your site’s SEO can earn you.
Long story short, as long as Google is showing organic results to search queries like it currently is, then optimizing your website to adequately address these queries (aka, having an SEO strategy) will continue to be a worthwhile investment — and it’s never too late to get started.
2. You only need to do SEO once
Some aspects of SEO may only need to be done once such as creating a responsive design that’s optimized for various screen sizes (and yes, this is an aspect of SEO). But even then, the design will eventually need to be updated.
Other aspects of SEO — in fact, most aspects of SEO — will need to be reevaluated and updated consistently. Not only does Google constantly push out new algorithm updates that change the way they prioritize ranking, but common searches and trends change too. Old links start to rot, and your site can start to lack the fresh content that keeps its integrity high, which keeps it competitive on the SERPs.
How do you do this? Regular content updates. Updating your content on a regular basis, such as posting new blogs, updating outdated service pages, rewriting old blogs so that they’re more reflective of current information, etc., builds trust between you and the person who uses your site. More importantly, it works to build domain authority and drives more traffic to your site thus increasing your SEO.
3. The higher the monthly search volume, the better
Determining SEO success factors is not always as simple as looking at how many times a keyword gets searched in a month. And bigger isn’t always better.
For example, a marketing director for a local furniture store might be weighing two keywords to focus on in their next piece of content: “Soft mattresses” which has tens of thousands of monthly searches, and “best mattress store Houston” which only has about 200.
Despite being more popular, the first search term is broad, competitive and doesn’t necessarily indicate intent to purchase a mattress. The “best mattress store Houston” search, on the other hand, maps to an action — purchasing a mattress at a Houston-area mattress store — and is of higher value to your business, even if it may result in fewer impressions.
Long term, choosing keywords that align with your target user’s intent will have the biggest impact on SEO and on your business. After all, Google ranks content based on how relevant it is to the search itself. Secondary factors to consider are how often they’re being searched and how competitive they are to rank for. All of these factors help you to select keywords based on your chances of actually ranking for them.
4. Paying for ads will help your site rank organically
A pervasive SEO myth is that Google will prioritize ranking your site simply because you are paying them through ads. This is not true. Paying for ads will not directly help your site rank higher on the SERPs.
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is however a very valuable aspect of your digital marketing strategy, and is a great tool to use to complement your SEO efforts. While it doesn’t directly boost your rankings, it can indirectly improve your SEO by driving traffic to your site and can even help you refine your organic keyword strategy.
5. SEO is only about ranking in the first spot on SERPs
Ranking in the first position of any relevant search results page is exciting, but SEO is about much more. If your goal is only to rank first for your primary keyword, you’re missing out on other opportunities to bring more eyes to your site. Instead, the focus should be on creating optimized, relevant content that prioritizes bringing qualified traffic to your site.
For instance, your website may be in the third position for your most important (and competitive) keyword, but you may actually receive more qualified traffic than your higher-ranking competitors due to high rankings for a wider variety of relevant keywords deployed carefully throughout your content library.
6. You don’t need to do keyword research
Using the service you offer as your primary keyword without doing keyword research is a big mistake. Broad keywords such as “criminal lawyer” are typically very hard to rank for, and while they may define your service, they don’t take into account user intent, and put you into a highly competitive market.
Who is looking for a criminal lawyer? Why are they looking for a criminal lawyer? Where are they looking for a criminal lawyer? What types of questions might they be asking?
All of these thought processes are important to consider when refining your keyword strategy. So yes, keyword research, as well as critical thinking about your qualified customer, is necessary for selecting keywords that attract the right kind of traffic while giving your site a fighting chance on the SERPs.
7. Stuffing keywords will help your rankings
More is always better, right? Wrong. Google will actually slap your wrist for overusing keywords in your content in an attempt to climb the rankings. Your page may be knocked down in the rankings or even removed completely for using this tactic. As a general rule of thumb, your keyword should only be used once for every 200 words and it must be used in a grammatically correct way.
8. The only thing my site needs is on-page SEO
Even if you haven’t knowingly bought into this SEO myth, on-page SEO is typically what’s understood as “SEO”. It’s the content, keyword research, meta-description, alt texts, and title tags side of things. But there are several other types of SEO that are just as important to incorporate such as technical SEO, off-page SEO, and local SEO.
If you’re working with a web design company you’ll want to ask them about how they’re planning to incorporate technical SEO into your website. This includes having a responsive design, SSL certificate, and fast site speeds.
Otherwise, your SEO strategy should include building your internal linking structure, utilizing social media platforms, and optimizing your Google My Business.
Keep reading: Top 5 signs you need a new website
9. I don’t need to pay for an SSL certificate
For the last 8+ years, Google has prioritized ranking websites with an SSL certificate (HTTPS sites) because they ensure the privacy, safety, and security of their visitors. If you’re trying to cut corners in your budget, an SSL certificate for your website is not the place to do it. If not because of its potential impact on SEO, but because future users are more likely to come to a website with one.
10. Blogging isn’t important for SEO
If you’re looking for a way to improve your site’s ranking, strategic blogging is one important way that you can do it. Adding a blog to your business’s website gives you a space to establish authority in your industry, positions your website as a trustworthy source of information to answer client common questions, increases website traffic, targets specific clients, and provides additional opportunities to improve your linking structure.
Let Baal & Spots take your digital marketing to the next level
No matter what industry you’re in — whether you’re in the medical field, have an eCommerce site, or are interested in SEO for lawyers — if you have a website for your business, SEO needs to be a part of your strategy.
That said, there are plenty of SEO myths and black-hat tactics out there that could negatively impact your business’s SEO. Due to regular changes being made to the algorithm and the complex nature of SEO success factors needed to devise a winning strategy, to get the best results, it’s smart to consult with experts in the business.
Baal & Spots is a Houston-based strategic creative design and website development company that offers custom and creative solutions to your biggest digital dilemmas.
Our suite of services includes SEO, website design and development, content marketing, and it doesn’t stop there — all aimed at helping your site, and your business, attract and nurture the right clients. If you’re looking to grow your businesses and your web presence, let’s connect!
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