Top 17 SEO Myths Which Get Me Triggered
Here are top SEO myths, which really get me triggered
1. SEO is dead
Sigh.
It was said many times like that before, but in 2018 SEO and content marketing still work like a charm and SEO still provides best ROI of any inbound marketing channel.
2. SEO was cool in 2005, now you should focus only on Instagram and Youtube
Ok, that’s true that SEO has become much more competitive and it’s really hard to monetize really fast. But, SEO still works well in long term (see point 1).
Don’t go after hype, figure what works best for you.
3. SEO is *scammy, spammy, not serious*
There is some kind of attitude towards SEO, that this is kind of bullsh*t growth hack, which can damage reputation of your business.
In fact, SEO is one of the top marketing channels and many world class brands (from tech startups to practically any other area) rely heavily on SEO.
Check out: Hubspot, Intercom, Buffer, etc.
4. Pagerank
Pagerank was a really important Google SEO metric in old-school SEO days. But, then Google stopped updating it.
Now, there are more advanced link metrics – such as Ahrefs Rank, Domain Authority, Citation Flow.
Read more about SEO metrics.
5. Just post content – Google will figure it out
There is a common belief, that if you will just post content – it will start ranking on Google by itself.
No it won’t. You need to work hard to get backlinks and boost your domain. Google is becoming really smart, but still it’s not a magic tool, which will do everything for you.
6. With SEO tricks, your fresh new blog can get 100K sessions in *2 months*
Unless you are a Buzzfeed or CNN with hundreds of content writers, or you have found an incredible niche, it’s gonna be hard.
SEO is quite competitive these days, but still worth it in a long run.
With a fresh new blog and limited resources it can take 8-9 months, before your blog will start to get steady and decent traffic from Google.
This kind of jump is possible with other traffic sources though.
7. 300 words content will do
In general, it won’t.
Especially on a fresh new blog. If you want to rank for competitive, high intent keywords, you will need at least 1500-2000 words.
8. Fiverr content for $5 will do
Unless you’ve found a fantastic gig – it won’t. Bad quality, spinned articles can actually harm your SEO and destroy your audience you worked so hard to get.
One of the most important metrics in Google ranking is session time. If your blog fails on that – it will be hard to rank.
9. I don’t need backlinks
In reality, if you just post content and it doesn’t get any backlinks – chances of getting some decent, evergreen Google traffic are minimal.
However, if your content is extremely good, shareable or viral – you can get links without any link building effort.
10. Backlinks is everything or “what’s your DA”?
As an opposite to previous myth, there are some SEO “experts”, for whom backlinks or DA (Moz Domain authority) – is the holy grail of SEO. Nothing else matters – content, audience, traffic, session time, design, mobile experience – only “show me your DA”.
11. Now you don’t need to focus on keywords (after Hummingbird)
Hummingbird update was like an earthquake in SEO world. It main aim was to reduce amount of SPAM content on Google. Pages with content like this:
Buy cheap sneakers online
Cheap sneakers online is the best choice online, where you can get cheap sneakers online to wear cheap sneakers. Get cheap sneakers now! Cheap sneakers on our site is the best choice.
After Hummingbird Google focuses more on topic clusters.
But, keyword research is still a crucial part of SEO. Maybe, you should think not of stuffing your articles with keywords non-senses, but rather analyzing why people are searching for these keywords, which problems they want to solve.
In my opinion, you should still do an extensive keyword research and:
- instead of creating many small keyword related article – create one long form (3000-4000K words) topic cluster, which contains all keywords;
- make your articles with problem-solving approach.
12. Meta tags don’t matter anymore
Meta tags include three elements: title, meta description and meta keywords. Last one (meta keywords) was downgraded by Google and really doesn’t matter anymore.
But first two (Title and Meta Description) are still really important.
13. With good SEO agency I will have top rankings in *1 month*
Unless you already have an old domain, with great authority and your niche isn’t that competitive – it wouldn’t work this way.
You probably received this kind of email.
SEO is a long-term game.
It took Neil Patel 9 years to start getting 700-800K sessions per month.
But, the good thing about SEO is that, when you finally get SEO traffic – it stays. It’s evergreen. Unlike most of the traffic from social media.
Evergreen traffic – this is what you are looking for, if you want to generate passive income and build a stable business.
14. Just put out long-form content and you are fine
With all the hype around long form content after Hummingbird update – it’s still not the answer too all SEO questions.
For search engine, it is important whether your content can satisfy a user with specific search query or not.
If your content didn’t answer the question/solved the problem and user went to another site = bad, if stayed on your page = good.
If you can answer the question with long form content – great, if short form content is enough – also ok.
In my experience, I’ve noticed many articles, which are 200-300 words long, but which rank really well – because they just answer the question/search query.
15. Social signals isn’t a ranking factor
From recent time social signals became really an important factor in SEO. It is almost as backlinks now.
In my experience, I’ve noticed, that posts with thousands of shares from Pinterest perform much better in organic search results.
16. We already failed miserably with SEO
In a lot of companies and startups, SEO can be approached as some kind of growth hack or trick – with little effort and price you can really fast get a lot of traffic and customers.
They usually try to publish or buy some blogs, insert a few keywords – and that’s it. And after a few weeks – when it obviously don’t bring any results – people give up and go back to AdWords and Facebook.
Backlinks? On-page SEO? Technical SEO? Competitor research? Content research? Nope…
In 2018 SEO became really competitive. Even with a big effort you can see first results maybe in 4-6 months. But, it will be worth it.
17. SEO is a solution to all company problems
I like SEO, but it should never distract e.g. from building your product and speaking with customers.
IMHO, SEO in combination with a great product, team, etc, etc can bring really outstanding results.
But, if you bring thousands of visitors to your site, which sells some crap products – it’s not gonna work.
Check out these top #seomyths! #pagerankClick To Tweet
Further reading
SEO myths from Neil Patel
SEO myths from Moz
Back to you
Did you bust any SEO myths? What was most impressive/dumb?
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