The 6 Top SEO Myths Debunked
Don’t fall trap to these common myths.
There’s still a lot of mystery and confusion around the practice of SEO. Due to the way Google keeps the exact algorithm a secret, there’s just a ton of bad information out there.
From buying backlinks, to meta descriptions — here are the 6 biggest SEO myths around today.
#1. Optimizing Meta Descriptions Directly Helps Rankings
There’s a lot of people out there, who thanks to tools like Yoast, think that putting your keyword into your meta description a couple of times will help you rank higher.
This is only true as a secondary factor, in some cases. Google does look at the click-thru-rate of different results and if by putting the keyword in there more people click on it, you might see a boost — but it’s not a direct factor in the ranking of your page.
#2. You Don’t Need An SSL If You’re Not Processing Payments
Getting an SSL is one of the biggest no-brainers in SEO right now. You can get one for free (from either Cloudflare, or Let’s Encrypt) and set it up for a basic WordPress site in a matter of minutes.
Even if you’re not processing payments, if your visitors are using Google Chrome (58.4% of people do), whenever they fill out ANY FORM they’re going to see a site “Not Secure” message in their browser.
Sites with an SSL tend to see a pretty significant rise in the rankings if they’re competing with sites that don’t currently have one.
#3. Getting An Exact Match For My Keyword In My Content Helps
It used to be that getting your keyword spread throughout your content exactly as it’s written would help give you a boost in the rankings.
Google is smarter than that now. Now, Google is able to analyze the context of your article and place you in the results for keywords that might not appear anywhere on your page.
Due to advances in Latent Semantic Indexing, Google is able to tell all sorts of things about the meaning of your content. If your article is about Apple (the technology company), you’re not going to rank for fruit related keywords. Likewise, if your article uses the term “Power Washing”, Google is going to realize that term is synonymous with “Pressure Washing”.
#4. The Goal of SEO Is To Rank For Spot #1 For A Keyword
I get this one quite a bit. “We want to rank #1 for ________”.
Why? What’s the goal?
The only goal of marketing should be to increase business. Rankings are useless if they’re not driving any traffic, or if the terms aren’t converting for some sort of other business reason.
#5. Google Penalizes Sites For Duplicate Content
I’m not sure how this myth started, but I hear “Google will penalize your entire site for duplicate content”. This isn’t true in the slightest.
All Google does is ignore the duplicate content. You’re not going to see some huge drop because of it. In fact, most sites have duplicate content in some form or another (*ahem* headers, footers, and sidebars), so Google creating some sort of blanket rule just wouldn’t make sense.
#6. Google Probably Won’t Catch Me For Buying Links
Google is smarter than you. Google is smarter than me. Google is getting smarter everyday.
If you think you’re the one person who’s going to get away with buying backlinks, you’re in for a rude awakening. I’m not saying it won’t work in the short-term, but Google will catch you. It has consistently and successfully updated its algorithm to eliminate these blackhat strategies for 20 years.
Being in a position where you’re always trying to stay one step ahead of the largest data collection and analysis company in the world is much harder and more expensive than just playing by the rules.
What SEO myths have you heard, or what SEO questions do you have? Leave a comment below, I’d love to do a followup post where I answer some of them.
