SEO Myths

Many so called SEO experts will perform and charge you for “submission” to the search engines. I hate to tell you this, but you just threw away your money. Google, Bing, and Yahoo do not require submission at all. In fact, I prefer that the search engines pick up and index the sites I’m working naturally. If you’re having trouble indexing your new website, try setting up some social media accounts and linking them to your home page. This will usually cause your site to be indexed in a matter of hours.

While this may have been the case at some point in the past, it is certainly not true now. It’s much better to focus on the QUALITY of the links instead of the quantity. One really great link from CNN will have a much larger impact on your rankings than 100 links of low quality blog comment links and it also ensures you avoid any possible penalties.

I see this myth in action all the time. Many businesses hire a fancy web designer that makes a great looking website and they expect the results to start pouring in! It’s simply not that easy. Websites that don’t proactively practice SEO don’t get traffic. You could have the best looking website out of your competitors, but what does it matter if customers can’t find it? Creating good content is advantageous, but there is so much more that needs to be done before your website attracts the visitors that you are looking for.

This is very similar to myth #3. A lot of web designers state they also provide search engine optimization. Make sure you ask them exactly what they do and what you are paying for. They most likely won’t be doing any off-page activities and this is a clear sign that you shouldn’t be paying for their services. If the cost is under a few hundred dollars per month, this should be a warning sign that they might not providing the service you think you are paying for. SEO is a very difficult task and companies that under charge are just looking to take advantage of your lack of knowledge.

This is I myth I still hear often despite the clear evidence against it. It’s been shown in multiple studies that there are now more mobile searches than desktop searches. Mobile searches are bound to become even more popular into the future and optimizing your site for ALL devices is now more important than ever. We only create responsive websites and recommend switching websites that aren’t responsive. They look great on phones, tablets, and desktops of all sizes and create a great experience for the end user. It’s only a matter of time before you must have a better mobile experience. What are you waiting for?

If are unfamiliar with this term, Meta-Descriptions are the snippets that you see under the results in search engines. They have NO direct impact on the ranking of your website, but they can be used to increase your click-thru-rate. Instead of writing the Meta-Descriptions for the search engines, you should write for the end user. Don’t keyword stuff but make it catch instead. It will serve you and website much better.

I’m not going to sit here and tell you that less content is better than more content. The real issue here is the QUALITY of the content. I would much rather have 100 pieces of excellent content and 1500 pages or poor content. Google and the other search engines agree. Google has created a content penalty that they call “Panda”. The purpose of this filter is to determine which sites have poor quality content and make it much more difficult or impossible to rank. In turn, the filter also helps sites with quality content rise above those that don’t.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this. Literally. After every major update, many site owners panic and reasonably so after a major ranking decrease. Link building is still the #1 most important factor for ranking a website and trust me, it is alive and well. Link building is definitely much more complex than 5 years ago and you must keep up with the changes to be effective. I expect link building to be the #1 ranking factor for a very long time to come.