SEO Google has a reputation for spreading misinformation and misleading people. One reason for this is that Google tries to keep itself secret to prevent anyone from manipulating its search engine results pages (SERPs).
Despite this, Google has recently made a clear effort to become more open by engaging more with the SEO community.
SEO mistakes to forget
SEO is a one-time thing
It would be great if it was easy. In reality, search engine optimization never ends. The story continues with tag optimization, broken link detection, redirects, speed optimization, and keyword research.
A website should always be considered a “work in progress.” With regular search engine upgrades, improved technology, and fierce competition, online businesses can't afford to rest on their marketing laurels. Ranking your site is just one of the many tasks that his talented SEO company and in-house staff spend on each month.
Keyword repetition improves search engine rankings
This misconception about SEO will never go away. A site's relevance to a particular search query may be strongly indicated by its keyword density, which is the percentage of keywords displayed on web pages. However, there is little point in using the same keyword phrases over and over again on your website.
First and foremost:
- This may negatively impact the user experience.
- For bots scouring the web for spam,
- This could lead to sanctions
- Keyword research is still important, but instead of worrying about the exact order of the words, think about your content as a whole.
Direct ranking factors are far more important
Semantics is the root cause of most of the SEO mistakes listed here, especially when it comes to considering direct vs indirect rankings.
Backlinks and other basic web essentials are examples of direct factors that have an immediate impact on search engine results. Since these items are specific, you can clearly mark them from your list of SEO-boosting items. However, that is not the only intangible asset that influences rankings.
The value of meta keywords
Search engines stopped using meta tags in their ranking algorithms after realizing the presence of spammers trying to influence search engines. Of these, meta keywords are the most well-known.
Use meta tags if you want your competitors to know the keywords you're targeting and want to undermine your results. If not, you can omit the meta tag. Meta tags have no SEO benefits. However, it is different if you want to focus your SEO on Yandex (Russian search engine) or Baidu (Chinese search engine), where meta keywords are somewhat relevant.
No additional meta tags required
Meta tags are bits of text in the page's source code that describe the page's content. They will look like this:
Meta refresh redirects and meta keywords are two examples that are unimportant and discouraged. However, the direct and indirect SEO importance of different meta tags is different.
Here are some more important meta tags.
“Meta robots” tell search engines how and whether to index your website.
Meta viewports control how your website looks on different devices.
Using the wrong meta robots tag can seriously affect your site's visibility in search results, which is why you need to fully understand values like index, noindex, follow, nofollow etc.
The more links the better
When evaluating links, prioritize quality over quantity.
Higher search engine rankings are a direct result of inbound links (also known as backlinks). Inbound links tell search engines about your site's relevance. However, these backlinks should be natural and clearly earned.
CTR directly determines rankings
Contrary to popular belief, CTR does not directly correlate to search engine rankings. However, there is evidence from research and analysis to support this idea.
The answer is still a mystery, actually. And to be honest, it doesn't make any difference.
A former Google executive in charge of search quality said in the FTC investigation:
The data from clicks influences the rankings themselves: in theory, if you see that for a particular query, 80% of users choose result 2 and only 10% choose result 1, you can infer that result 2 is more likely what consumers want, so change result 2.
Pay-per-click enhances search engine optimization
Some people think that if they pay for PPC advertising, their website will perform better in organic search results on Google or Bing.
There is a complete separation between the algorithms used to determine where sponsored ads appear and Google's organic search engine. There is no interaction between the two. So just because you spend a lot of money on paid ads, you shouldn't expect to see better organic results.
The use of social media as a ranking factor is conditional.
From Google’s perspective, social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook do not influence search engine rankings, and links contained in your social media profiles and posts are not considered backlinks.
More words give better results
Finding the ideal number of words to rank #1 in the SERPs has been the subject of numerous studies. The ideal word count is between 600 and 3,000. According to Backlinko, the average word count for top-ranking pages on Google is 1,447 words.
But of course, there are many other SEO myths out there.
If you come across something that makes you wonder if it's an SEO urban legend or proven fact, please email us. Let us help you clarify the situation.