Top 10 SEO Myths of All Time...

Every time a new product or service is born, along with it are born hundreds of myths, which no matter what, just refuse to disappear, despite several attempts at demystifying them. The search engine optimization industry is no different! Each one of us have at least come across a hundred myths or Do Not Do’s & even more of these ‘Top 10 SEO tips’ aimed at clarifying these myths, which we’ve followed religiously. Right from updating our site, to building links the “preferred way”, to practically each point in these guides, but yet, our site’s name doesn’t seem to find the glory of bracing the top positions in the search results. What’s worse is that we’ve spent several thousands in doing all of this! Some of these tips may have once worked well, but now belong to the past.
Here, I have listed out a few of these myths that, shockingly, people still seem to believe:
1. SEO is a One-Time Activity
Yeah… I wish it were that simple too! Staying on top in the search engines is a constant struggle. Search engine optimization is not a one-time fix, but an ongoing process and it involves a lot of work which needs to be followed up on. Google and other search engines consider hundreds of factors before indexing your site, and the formula they use, or ‘Algorithm’ as it’s called, is constantly updated. So, you need to work on on-page and off-page strategies regularly to get ranked well.  Many people think that building links one time will get them to the top of the search engine results. This may boost your site ranking initially, but if you leave it at that, do not bother to further optimize your site and continue building links, it will definitely start descending in the search engine rankings.
2. SEO is All About Building Links
Big mistake! There’s a lot more to SEO than link building. While link building is an essential part of SEO, you should not forget about other activities involved: optimizing current and new pages, continually adding content, optimizing internal link structures, engaging in indirect link building techniques like link bait, etc.
3. Higher PageRank = Better Search Engine Ranking
Doesn’t work that way! The PageRank value is just one of the factors Google considers when ranking sites, it’s not the only factor! Another point to note is that the PR value shown on your toolbars is not the real-time value used by Google, those values are not revealed. Please don’t confuse PageRank with search engine rankings, they are two entirely different aspects of judging a site and shouldn’t be confused with one another.
4. You Should Submit Your URLs to Search Engines
There are many who will assure you that submitting your URL to search engines is one of the first steps to getting ranked. This will do you no good. Your site will get indexed anyway if it has incoming links. You need to build more incoming links to work your way up in your rankings. Submitting your URL doesn’t do anything for ranking pages. There are some who advise resubmitting links often as well, which is again a futile exercise. Instead, you can put that same effort in to other SEO activities which will prove much more productive.
5. Pay Per Click Ads Will Help/Hurt Rankings
Who says PPC affects your ranking? PPC has no positive or negative impact on a site’s actual ranking. Search engines are quite intelligent and do not confuse themselves with organic and paid search results.
6. Great Content = Great Ranking
Your site may have content like no other, but you’ll have to market yourself well to get the attention it deserves. You NEED to take that extra step to get noticed by search engines. Good content is necessary, but you need to optimize your site as well for your content to get noticed and ranked accordingly. Otherwise, your great content may go unnoticed and your targeted audience will visit other sites instead.
7. All Paid Links Are Bad Links
Paid links means paying another site to link to your website. Paid links may not sit well with a search engine’s guidelines but many people are successfully buying links strategically and benefiting from such actions. If a link is carefully bought and goes undetected by search engines, it can work well for rankings. If the links are placed in context to the topic, search engines may not even realize that it’s a paid link and you can easily get away with it, targeting the right audience. Whether or not you feel it’s a tactic you should engage in is the matter for another debate but the fact of the matter is that people are deriving results from paid links and the myth about no one getting away with it needs to be cleared.
8. Search Rankings can be Guaranteed
Some search engine professionals will guarantee a position in the top search engine results. Sorry to burst the bubble, but there can never be a guarantee in search engine rankings. Optimizing your site will definitely pay off but it is a highly competitive field and no one can guarantee you results.
9. SEO can take years to return results
Nobody has an answer to exactly how long it will take but if you’ve got your techniques right, it’s surely not years! Even if you’re in a highly competitive market space, you could still start by ranking for some long tail terms quite easily and then over time ranking for some of your key terms. With the right SEO strategies and getting some quality links, rankings do not necessarily have to take that long to come by.
10. It’s a Good Practice to Include a Meta Robots Tag Specifying Index, Follow
Including ‘follow’ tags does nothing for your ranking. Search engines follow links mentioned in your site by default. It doesn’t have to be told to do so. It is only if you don’t want search engines to follow links mentioned in it that you specify a “nofollow” attribute in your meta robots tag. This is usually done when the comments or inputs from outsiders are not moderated and you don’t want the search engines to follow links that they have mentioned.
Phew! Feels good to finally put a stop to these misconceptions. I hope after reading this post, you will no longer waste your time on these unproductive things. Time to move on & start using your time wisely to work on activities that actually get you results. You can thank me later when you start seeing your rankings & traffic increase! If you know of any other myths that I have not included in this post, do make sure you leave a comment below & let me know about them!