5 SEO Myths To Avoid

I wanted to talk about 5 SEO Myths to avoid – these have all been noticed in the past 4 months!

We’ve all been there, minding our own business when suddenly you receive this in completely broken English:

I can get you Google number 1 spot, trust me, me professional

And before I got into SEO and websites as a professional, I truly didn’t know how often these kinds of spam requests are sent. I mean, for a start, getting to the number 1 spot of Google is a thing of the past unless you are running paid ads.

I say that because even if you are the number 1 ranking result organically, any paid advertisements will still show before you.

Before I go any further, I’ve also written this on Medium.

We all know how important SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is. Nobody needs reminding of that, but let me anyway.

SEO is a great way to organically gain more traffic to your business, thus increasing sales and revenue. That’s the theory anyway, and often times SEO takes a lot of patience and understanding to event implement let alone see results.

So today, I wanted to cover off what I think are the 5 biggest myths when it comes to SEO. Please, read this article so that you don’t fall into the traps!

Lets jump into the list!

Awesome – you’ve thought about SEO for a while, researched your options and have a plan to implement. But no plan to maintain.

So many people see SEO as a one-time thing they do and never have to touch again. Instead, think of this like the front of a shop. Yeah it’s a lot of work to build the display cases and install the front door and that all works for a while to make the shop more attractive to customers.

But in 5 years time, if you haven’t maintained the shop front then it’ll be run down and ineffective at attracting customers.

I’d estimate setting aside at least a full day or two per month to research new keywords, track performance of existing keywords and tally how that is actually helping your business. Because that is the most important thing after all.

So please, don’t implement a particular SEO plan without thinking about the maintenance and upkeep that comes along with it.

Now that you know what a keyword is, you’re suddenly drawn to the thought:

Why not put loads of keywords into my website?

It starts as an innocent thought but quickly spirals until you have a blog post containing 100+ keywords, most of which don’t relate at all to the purpose of the post.

This is called ‘Keyword Spiral.’ And yes, I just made that phrase up. But this does actually happen and it’s really bad for your website’s reputation.

Basically put, Google and other search engines can tell when you’re trying to spam keywords into your website. And your website will be treated exactly as that: SPAM!

It’s important when building websites or writing posts, to be mindful of what you want to rank for and that any keywords align with the purpose of your post. You wouldn’t want to have keywords about lipstick on a post about shoes. They’re unrelated.

The idea here is that you aim to have as many backlinks from as many sources as possible without thinking about the actual source. You do this because you think that the quantity is greater than the quality.

This just isn’t true.

Having 10 backlinks from high ranking and reputable sources is soooo much better than 10,000 backlinks from dodgy sites and shady sources.

Search engines want to build a reputation score for your site so that it knows whether to recommend you or not. So having a bunch of dodgy backlinks from sources with very low reputation can actually hurt you.

When seeking out backlinks, it’s important to reach out to companies that you trust and that you would do business with. This is exactly the same in physical business, if Alan Sugar introduced you to a crowd it would mean a lot more than if 100 random people introduced you.

This will be a fairly short section – because some people think that meta tags just aren’t important anymore. And it’s true but only to an extent.

Whilst meta tags alone aren’t going to boost your traffic dramatically, they are still the corner stone of well structured online content. They’re useful for search engines when they come along and rate your content, and still aim click-through-rates (CRT).

An example of a bad meta title for this very article would be ‘SEO Myths’. It’s bad because it’s very vague, lacks other niching keywords and doesn’t engage potential clickers. A better meta title would be ‘5 SEO Myths To Avoid‘, or Top 5 SEO Myths You Need To Avoid’. These are better options as they provide more detail with the number of myths in article. They also use more specific keywords and are more engaging.

Social media is now the corner stone of any brand. It’s the easiest way for brands to grow, advertise and sell products.

Most social media platforms are free as well, unless of course you choose to perform paid advertising.

This is helpful as it can build brand awareness, drive traffic to your website and is also a great opportunity for backlinks.

The next time you are writing a post on Facebook, make sure to link to your website or anything else important. The backlink could help improve your reputation with search engines, leading to more engagement from actual users.

Whenever you hear ‘social media’, replace it with the term ‘free advertising’.

Well that’s it. 5 SEO myths to avoid in order to perform better in search engines and in business.

We covered all the major blocking beliefs that I think drag down most SEO beginners. All this information is super helpful if you run your own website and feel completely lost and don’t have a clue why things aren’t helping.

If you need any assistance, reach out here. No obligations, but advice where I can give it.

Enjoy! 🎉