About The Author: Callum Mundine is the head of digital marketing at Warble Media – an ecommerce website design company based in Dubbo, NSW, Australia.
The world of SEO is constantly changing. It’s quite hard to keep up with its latest trends. It’s even harder to differentiate relevant and working SEO practices with the outdated ones. Here are some myths that you need to stop believing:
Myth 1: The difference between HTTPS and HTTP do not matter.
People have this misconception that the difference between HTTPS and HTTP does not matter. Well, it does matter.
A couple of years ago, Google Chrome started marking websites without SSL as unsafe. As a result, people noticed alerts when they reached websites that do not begin with “https://”. That little “s” spells the difference between being tagged as a safe or unsafe site by Google.
Hubspot’s survey tells us that 85% of the people would not proceed and hit the back button, when a page is marked as unsafe. It’s quite understandable that people look at this as a red flag and discontinue. In other words, this will surely impact your search engine ranking.
If your site is still carrying the old “http://”, it’s high time to have it changed. Acquiring this SSL certificate is easy and you can get this for free or for a minimal cost. Go and check your website now and make sure you have the encrypted SSL. Changing from “http://” to “https://” could give you the edge over your competitors.
Myth 2: SEO is a scam.
People have this common misconception that SEO is all about manipulative tricks and schemes. Sad to say, people have probably felt this way because of some shady SEO agencies who promised too much and did not deliver. However, this is such a sweeping statement. There are plenty of trustworthy SEO companies who truly work to help their clients gain website traffic.
Myth 3: More content means better SEO
Before, people assume that it is all about the numbers.
Not true.
Before, SEO was all about tricking search engines to get better ranking. Google has definitely become smarter. It has gotten better in filtering and determining which content is most helpful and relevant for their users. It has adopted improved algorithms that show more refined search results.
Google has also gotten better in indexing content and in identifying SEO’s old tricks. Multiple content of the same kind are immediately flagged by Google as spam. In other words, quality content outdoes quantity. What do you need to do? Make sure that the quality of your content is way better than your competitor’s.
Myth 4: Google endorsed SEOs that promise you top search engine ranking.
Some SEO agencies will give you over-the-top promises. They will promise a #1 ranking on Google if you take them in. They give you this guarantee because they claim to be connected with Google.
The saying, “Too good to be true” applies here.
First of all, Google has never announced or endorsed any SEO agency. Ranking #1 takes a lot of hard work and good SEO practices. It’s a combination of many things like quality content, smart optimized use of meta tags and keywords, and solid backlinks.
Myth 5: Link building is a no-no.
Some people assumed that link building is a no-no after Google’s John Mueller mentioned that link building is something he’d try to avoid. This statement was misinterpreted and the context was misconstrued. The original statement was meant to emphasize preference over naturally-grown profile links. It was also meant to show distaste over link schemes used to manipulate page ranks.
In reality, search engine algorithms greatly use link authority. Link building is a legit digital marketing practice used to develop your website authority. Google’s statement actually means that businesses should avoid having useless and irrelevant links on their sites. They view this as an obvious manipulation of page ranking and this could be counter-productive, as this could cost penalties. To put this myth to a close, Google is in no way against good and solid backlinks.
Myth 6: Keyword research is irrelevant.
Google Hummingbird’s update in 2013 caused this confusion. People started thinking that concepts have replaced keywords. Thus, people assumed that keyword targeting was no longer valuable.
However, Google never directly said that keywords were no longer relevant. Hummingbird and Rankbrain did improve how Google search engine functions. They have made the search process more about the use of context, and have paid more attention to related concepts.
With Hummingbird in place, the search process became more sophisticated. The burden of keyword ratio is less significant. This became one less thing to worry about. But to clarify, this did not make keyword research less important. Although, it is fair to say that this caused the keyword research approach to change for the better. It made keyword research more about understanding searcher intent and coming up with content that could meet this need.
Common sense tells us that it is quite impossible to search for anything without the use of keywords. Reliable platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook heavily rely on keywords. They use this to answer to their users’ needs. This is definitive proof that keyword research is here to stay.
The world of SEO is packed with myths. It also does not help that many of these myths were born from poor understanding and misinterpretation. Hopefully, the list above gave you a better grasp of what myths you should stop believing.