The ubiquity of search engines has changed the game for businesses aiming to expand their footprint through digital marketing. By now, you’ve probably heard about one strategy that many organizations use to boost their revenue: search engine optimization (SEO).
In a nutshell, SEO refers to the process of generating organic traffic to your website by elevating its position in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher your website ranks in SERPs, the more likely it is to be seen and visited by users. With more people looking at your web pages, the higher your chances of generating leads and profits.
That said, those uninitiated in SEO might have only a vague idea of what it takes to produce search engine-friendly content that ranks high in SERPs. Misconceptions in matters such as keyword insertion and backlinks could be keeping you from optimizing your time and resources, which could further hinder your growth as an enterprise.
Taking all that aside, let’s discuss some of the myths about SEO rankings that you should leave behind in order to boost your business’s online visibility as well as your credibility.
Myth 1: You Only Need SEO Once to Boost Your Rankings
Let’s get this out of the way: SEO is not a magic bullet. It’s not a “one-time, big-time” thing that will produce results worth a lifetime. On the contrary, SEO is a long-term strategy that requires continuous refinement to maintain traffic flow and high SERP rankings. It’s also for this reason that your business may need SEO services from a trusted digital marketing agency that can handle the nitty-gritty of SEO as your business grows.
It’s also worth noting that SEO strategies take a while to show results, so you need to be patient and keep optimizing your web content to continue generating traffic. In the meantime, it’s best to continue cutting through the noise by keeping your links relevant and your content as fresh as possible.
Myth 2: More Links Equals Higher Rankings
One of the most common beliefs about SEO is that link quantity trumps link quality. While it’s true that linking to external sites may help boost your rankings, you also need to ensure that your links lead to authoritative sources.
This is because, apart from improving your rankings, SEO is also meant to build authority around your website. Informative and high-quality content establishes trust among your page visitors, which could potentially increase your site’s conversion rate. Search engines also tend to penalize websites for linking to spammy or untrustworthy pages, which could hurt your online presence.
Hence, it would be a good idea to ensure that your content contains links to high-quality sources such as academic journals, online news sites, government websites, and other pages with high domain authority. Doing so will add value to your website, reflecting your own authority and helping you rank higher in SERPs. You may also want to include internal links to other pages on your website, along with external URLs to optimize your link placement.
Myth 3: The Origin of Your Backlinks Doesn’t Matter
Again, link quality matters in search rankings. These include backlinks, which refer to the hyperlinks from external sites that direct their visitors back to your site. To ensure that your site gets these backlinks, you need an effective link building strategy through methods like email outreach and broken link building (asking webmasters to replace their “dead” links with your content).
Just as it’s important to apply hyperlinks to relevant sources, you also need to ensure that URLs linking back to your website are from high-quality sources as well. Bad backlinks from untrustworthy websites will only hurt your rankings, as search engines measure link authority along with quantity.
One backlink from a high-authority site is still better for your rankings compared to hundreds of links from spam-heavy pages.
On the subject of linking, it’s also worth noting that internal links matter in boosting your ranking. Internal links keep readers engaged and send a signal that your site’s contents are relevant to what users are currently searching for.
Myth 4: You Should Use as Many Keywords as Possible
Keyword density refers to the number of times that keywords or phrases appear in a piece of content or a landing page. You might think that more is better, but that’s not actually the case with SEO. When you focus too much on keyword density, you might fall victim to keyword stuffing, which often leads to search penalties.
Thus, you need to limit your keywords to relevant topics; you can do this through comprehensive keyword research. With a good keyword research strategy and optimally placed links, you can elevate your search rankings and drive organic traffic from users seeking informative answers to their queries.
In the end, content is still king and should be your priority instead of the multitude of keywords you’ve pulled out.
Myth 5: Content Must be Fresh All Day, Every Day
Although content freshness is essential to getting a higher SERPs ranking, that doesn’t mean you have to keep serving fresh content every single day. Ultimately, what matters is that your existing content is updated and relevant enough to generate clicks.
While duplicate content won’t necessarily penalize your site, it may lead to backlink dilution or the splitting of link effectiveness between two URLs. To avoid this, you may want to republish content or repurpose existing material for other platforms such as social media sites or podcasts to generate new leads.
Move Past SEO Myths to Move Your Business Forward
Aside from the myths mentioned above, there are a lot of other misconceptions that you need to leave behind for your business to grow. Aspects such as page loading time, pay-per-click (PPC) content, and mobile friendliness also factor in your ranking strategy, and what you might believe about them may not be true in reality. This is why it would be a good business move to entrust your SEO matters to qualified agencies who know SEO facts from misinformation. Of course, it’s always a good idea to keep yourself informed on these matters to have a clear idea of what to look for in an effective SEO campaign.
