A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and while it’s great that so many businesses are now taking an interest in SEO, it can also be damaging when so many people think of themselves as “SEO Gurus” when really they’ve only had a very minor amount of experience with the industry.
It’s because of this that there are so many misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding SEO and that so many people follow bad practices completely believing themselves to be doing the best thing. Here we will look at some of these misunderstandings and at some of the biggest SEO myths. Make sure you don’t fall prey to these, and that you only take the best advice when it comes to doing your SEO.
SEO Doesn’t Work Any More
In the wake of Google Panda and Google Penguin, a lot of people who once swore by SEO are now feeling a bit betrayed by it as best practices change and as it becomes hard to predict what Google’s next move is going to be. However, this doesn’t by any means mean you should stop doing SEO. It still remains the very cheapest and easiest way for businesses and individuals without endless resources to get the word out and to compete with larger corporations and as long as you adapt and use your head you can still do SEO that will survive the majority of changes.
Your At Constant Risk of Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a real threat and in theory it could be used to take down your website. However while Google’s Disavow Links Tool seems to reaffirm the suspicion that bad links can do a lot of damage to your site, it’s also worth noting that we don’t know for sure how much of an impact few links can have on our position. I’m not saying negative SEO isn’t real, I’m just saying it’s been blown out of reasonable proportion and unless you’re very unlucky it probably doesn’t apply to you.
PR is the Best Measure of a Website’s Success
Your PR or ‘Page Rank’ is a good indicator of how much authority your site has, but that doesn’t automatically guarantee you success. For one a site with a low PR can outrank a site with a high PR on any particular SERP still, and then at the same time just because you’re getting lots of people to your site doesn’t mean that
SEO is Unscrupulous
Black hat SEO is made up of insidious spamming practices, and unfortunately this has coloured the reputation of SEO as a whole. SEO means literally ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and there’s nothing dodgy about that. There are plenty of very good SEO companies out there that use honest practices to make your site better and therefore get it to rank better with Google – you’ve just got to know which ones they are.
Keywords Are the Be All and End All of SEO
Keywords are still a part of SEO, but their power has been diminished through the algorithm updates and through the introduction of semantic search. These days synonyms are almost just as important, but most important of all is to just focus on writing great content.
Metatags Are Useful for Your Position
Apparently not any more – and word has it that Meta Tags aren’t even indexed by Google or Bing these days. They’re still useful for the snippets that appear on the SERPs, but don’t feel the need to stuff them full of keywords.
SEO Only Applies to Google
This just isn’t true, and while I’m not saying you should invest the same energy into ranking on Bing as you do for Google, you shouldn’t ignore it either. And more to the point you also need to bear in mind that YouTube and the App Stores and even online shops like Amazon are search engines in a way. The same principles can apply and there’s a lot of money here to be made.
This is a guest post by Jake Dickson. Jake Dickson is the owner of 24 Hour Locksmith Oakland Park FL, 24 Hour Locksmith North Lauderdale FL and 24 Hour Locksmith Hallandale Beach FL. If you want to guest post on Better Start Blogging blog, check out the guidelines here.