3 common SEO myths debunked in 2018
It’s 2018, and SEO (search engine optimisation) should be a key elements of your digital marketing strategy. So, what does it take to rank high in the search engines? Sure, you’ll read about all kinds of ways to improve your search engine rankings. However, many factors conflict with others, leaving business owners to question whether or not we should choose one strategy or another. Below are three common SEO myths that have been proven wrong, along with some real-life examples to debunk.
You Should Not Build Links For SEO
The Myth
It’s been stated for many years that the search engines have a strong distaste for unnatural links or any links that might manipulate page rank. Many have believed this might be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s guidelines.
The Evidence
Links remain the search engine’s strongest ranking signal. The real value in link building becomes quality over quantity. The more quality links a website has, the more Google will reward that site for their link building efforts, thus increasing the page rank for that website.
Clicks Don’t Influence Rankings
The Myth
Google’s official position on whether or not search engine click-through-rates have an impact on rankings has been skewed and inconsistent. Leading search engine optimization experts in multiple industries to believe that click data is too noisy and clicking is easy to spam (clickbait or click fraud), thus making it difficult to be used as a ranking signal.
The Evidence
There is a significant amount of evidence against this, mainly starting with Google’s guidelines on using clicks for rankings. Clicks in real time seem to affect rankings. For example, a page that is listed in the top 10 of Google will rank higher if people who click on that page spend significantly more time on that page than on other results in the top 10. Google will reward the page that has users who stay on that page longer than others because that page provides a more meaningful and long-lasting user experience for the searcher.
Keywords Are No Longer Important
The Myth
With Google updates such as Penguin and Hummingbird, many were left wondering if their overall SEO strategy had to change due to keywords being replaced by concepts and topics. Plus, they wondered if keyword targeting makes sense anymore.
The Evidence
There is no doubt that Google and other search engines have changed the way search is conducted, such as voice recognition and autocomplete search. However, this does not make the implementation and usage of keywords any less important. Search is still a user-intent-based experience, so keyword usage and dynamic population of metadata within search engines will still influence click through.