Although search engine optimization is not a new technique and been around for many years, there are still many rumors surrounding this practice. However, many people who are new to the marketing business fall for these and ultimately look at SEO in a negative light. The fact of the matter is that SEO has and always will be around and is very relevant when it comes to making websites more visible.
1. Videos and Images Don’t Serve a Purpose and SEO
Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, images and videos serve a great purpose in the role of SEO. However, images and videos need to be appropriately optimized or else they will not direct traffic to your website. For example, you need to name an image relevant to a product or content along with an alternative image name in order to contribute to SEO. Using the right dimension for pictures as well as image captions also plays a role in how effective your images are. Videos also deliver a message in the most convenient and economical way.
2. You Can Set and Forget
Lots of people who are new to the online marketing concept believe that SEO should be implemented at the beginning and that’s it. They believe their website will jump ranks and reach the top without any further time, effort or creativity. Your website may hold a solid position this way, however, it still requires continuous updates, changes, and implementation. This is simply because there are more than 1 billion websites already competing with each other on the website. It’s also because new algorithms are being introduced and therefore your SEO techniques need to change in order to work with those new introductions.
3. It’s Easy to Trick Google
Google earns approximately $109.65 billion per year in revenue. So tricking Google is not easy in fact it’s quite the opposite. This is mainly because they have some of the most highly qualified mega masterminds working with them. So black hat tactics will not get your site to the top. The only way to get your website to rank high on Google’s search engine is to learn and implement the best SEO practices according to the rules laid out by Google.
4. Keyword Stuffing Works
Forcing keywords into your content will not improve your rankings. Google’s algorithm has changed, therefore keywords must be placed naturally in the content so that it does not seem promotional. Keyword density also needs to be kept between 1 to 2%.
5. It’s a Good Practice to Spam with Poor Backlinks
It is suggested that you don’t go for a huge number of backlinks, as what really matters here is quality and not quantity. So that said, one quality backlink from a quality website is more effective than a dozen backlinks from poor sites.
Another common misconception is that social media plays no role in SEO. While this may be a hot debate in the digital marketing community, the truth is social media signals are used by Google’s algorithm. From a logical point of view, social media marketing will naturally improve your search engine rankings. So ultimately, if you would like to get your website on Google’s first page, you need to forget SEO myths, learn SEO best practices and implement them continuously.