SEO is one of the most mysterious marketing topics in the business world. Everyone sort of knows about it, yet nobody fully understands it. The complexity of SEO lies in the fact that it changes fairly regularly. Google is the largest search engine in the world and it regularly updates how it ranks websites and what can help or hinder a page from ranking highly.
It’s beneficial in some ways – many Google algorithm updates have helped businesses – but the downside is a hoard of misinformation lingering online. “Experts” might tell you one thing about SEO, only for the opposite to be true. You’ll also find loads of articles with outdated information, essentially aiding SEO myths spreading far and wide.
If you’re starting a business right now and want the most effective SEO strategy, you need to know what’s right and wrong. Here are the most regular SEO myths and why you should ignore them:
High-volume keywords are the only way to rank
Traditionally, SEO specialists tell you to target high-volume keywords. These keywords will be highly searched for every month and could have millions of searches overall. This leads you to believe that they’re the best keywords to target as they’re super popular and lots of people are searching for them.
In theory, this means more people will find your website when searching for popular terms. That’s why some SEO strategists to this day encourage you to target them as the only way to rank.
That’s wrong.
High-volume keywords are beneficial in some ways, but they’re ridiculously hard to rank for due to such intense competition. They’ll drive a lot of traffic, though they’re what we call keywords with “low buying intent”. As this post explains, targeting low-volume keywords with high-buying intent can be more beneficial from an SEO standpoint.
These keywords aren’t searched for as much, so they’re less competitive and easier to rank for, but the people who search for them are usually far along the buyer’s journey. Low-volume keywords include longer phrases and questions a potential customer might have when looking to buy what you sell. If you can get your site to rank well for these, you’ve got a higher chance of converting the traffic.
By all means, high-volume keywords are still good to focus on in some cases – but they’re not the only way to rank and you should look at low-volume ones too.
You must follow an ideal keyword density
For decades, business owners have been creating SEO-friendly content with a keen eye on keyword density. The concept is straightforward; you need to use your keywords a set number of times depending on how many words of content you’re producing. People claimed that a 2% keyword density was perfect and would help you rank better in search engines.
This caused businesses to put a strong emphasis on achieving the right keyword density – and many still follow the 2% rule today.
But here’s the thing; keyword density isn’t a ranking factor.
It’s been proven many times and admitted by Google themselves that there’s no such thing as an “ideal keyword density”. Instead, you should write naturally and make content that…well…makes sense! Stop trying to shoehorn keywords into sentences just to meet a specific percentage. What you tend to find is that writing naturally about a topic will mean you end up including a good smattering of keywords anyway.
Google prefers this as it makes your content better and more informative, rather than being a bit messy and stuffed full of random keywords or phrases.
All of your content must be long-form
Speaking about content, there’s been a recent phenomenon about long-form articles versus shorter-form stuff. The consensus is that your content must be long-form as it ranks better than shorter articles. This point is mainly fueled by studies claiming that content over 2,400 words ended up in the top two ranking spots more than others.
As you can imagine, this meant everyone started making content with well over 1,000 or 2,000 words all the time – but that’s not necessary!
The problem with this myth is that it’s too generalised. Yes, long-form content is king in some searches, but it depends on what your content is about. Follow this rule: write enough content so your topic is 100% covered. This might mean your blog post or guide is only 500-750 words long – but that’s fine if you’ve covered everything and made something informative and helpful.
Don’t force your content to be longer just because people say it ranks better. Content full of fluff and filler will rank a lot worse than a concise article that covers the topic.
Getting as many backlinks as possible will help your rankings
Backlinks and link-building are crucial for all SEO strategies. Funnily enough, a myth from a few years ago was about link-building being dead. That was false – changes to Google’s algorithm simply altered the way you could get links to your site and looked to eradicate black-hat link-building.
Anyway, the tables have turned and everyone is obsessed with generating backlinks. It’s what every SEO agency will tell you to do – but they act like getting as many backlinks as possible is the key to ranking highly.
That’s not technically true.
It’s more about the type of backlinks and the quality of the websites linking to your website that matters the most. If your site has lots of no-follow backlinks pointing to it, this tells Google not to follow the link and renders it useless for your SEO. Moreover, if your links come from dodgy websites or domains with no authority, it won’t mean much. You want quality do-follow links from authoritative sources to make your website look good, leading to a better ranking from Google.
Navigating the world of SEO myths is hard and this article barely scratches the surface. You’ll find plenty more out there, so be diligent whenever you receive advice or read tips about search engine optimisation. If you want to boost your ranking, you must filter out the myths and find genuine advice!
