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We’ve lost count of the times we’ve heard that search engine optimisation (SEO) is dead. That’s the first of many myths we’re going to bust in this article. SEO is not dead. As long as search engines and ranking algorithms exist, website owners will try to find ways to give their sites a boost. While some methods of SEO fall by the wayside as Google alters its PageRank algorithm, new methods evolve to take their place. It’s important to remember that Google’s ultimate goal is for its algorithm to rank sites entirely on the value they bring to their visitors. Google hasn’t yet implanted devices into our brains to directly measure our engagement, so instead they must use a series of proxies to estimate the value of a web page. Proxies include the quality of backlinks to a site, keywords, and the grammar and spelling of any written content on the site. We’ll never know exactly what’s in Google’s algorithm – but we do know Google’s aim. Engaging, high quality, regularly updated website content is what users (and Google) want – but that doesn’t stop a number of SEO myths from persisting…
Myth #1: There is an optimum keyword density
It’s SEO 101: keywords matter. In the early days of the internet, webmasters stuffed their pages with keywords to climb search engine results pages. It wasn’t long before Google et al. adjusted their algorithms to penalise sites with keyword stuffed content. These days, many SEO agencies continue to claim that there’s an optimum keyword density. This is simply not the case. Google is now clever enough to tell whether an article reads naturally. Writing with SEO in mind shouldn’t be significantly different to writing naturally – you might move your keyword nearer to the beginning of the page than you might have otherwise, and slightly change the wording of one or two sentences. If the content starts to be overwhelmed by the keywords or just doesn’t read well, that’s when you need to change it – not when the keyword density is higher than an arbitrary percentage plucked out of thin air.
Myth #2: I need to submit my site to search engines
Some SEO agencies will try to tempt SEO-illiterate companies to spend extra money on SEO submission services. Essentially, they’ll tell you that they need to notify Google, Bing and Yahoo about the existence of your website before it will show up in the rankings. This is not the case. All the major search engines now use crawlers and bots to scour the web for new content, so you don’t need to fill in any forms – or pay another company to do so on your behalf.
Myth #3: Buying ads makes my site rank higher
There’s logic in this myth. Giving Google money to advertise your site is great for them, so to encourage it they also give you a boost in organic search, right? Wrong. This myth is simply untrue. Believe this conspiracy theory all you want, but you could seriously harm your company’s SEO efforts if you throw all your money into search engine advertising and don’t improve your website’s content for organic search purposes.
Myth #4: The more links, the better
This is another myth that’s persisted because it once held some truth. However, Google’s algorithm has changed significantly since those days. You should be focusing on improving the quality of links to your website, not the quantity. In many cases, links to your site from questionable sites, or sites that are spammy in Google’s eyes, could have a detrimental effect on your ranking.
Ultimately, relying on the latest SEO trick or fad is extremely unlikely to achieve the long term results that your company craves. Instead, focus on what Google really wants – high quality content that people actually like to read. That’s what content marketing is all about. Give us a call if you’d like to learn more.