4 Common Myths about SEO
Level: basic
Are you just starting to dip your foot into SEO? Maybe you’ve heard a little bit about it and you’re eager to learn more. You’ve been Googling away, reading and researching as much as you can. Unfortunately, the nature of an ever-changing industry like SEO means that there is a lot of mis-information out there and more importantly, a lot of old information. Let your ol’ pals at Adster clear up some of the myths about SEO!
1. Use as many keywords as humanly possibly!
Read this:
Welcome to the home page of ABC Plumbing, your #1 Edmonton plumbing company! As your #1 Edmonton plumbing company, ABC Plumbing strives to be Edmonton’s cheapest and fastest Edmonton plumbers located in the Edmonton area.
Was that a pleasing reading experience? No. No it was not. Since both people and Google read/crawl your website, your website copy needs to be logical for a human to read. Trying to keyword stuff is just going to straight up annoy your human visitors, and Google has long gotten wise to this method.
*Also, please don’t welcome people to your home page. They know where they are.
2. Get ALL of the links, no matter the quality!
This could literally not be more false. 1 high quality link (say, from a Government of Canada website) trumps 10 links from yourcitynamehereawesomedirectory.org.
I don’t want to fall down the rabbit hole that is the risks of too many low quality links from low quality, potentially spammy websites so I’ll let Moz do the talking here.
Long story short: the domain authority of linking sites is the most important when looking for a good link. Quality over quantity!
3. I don’t need SEO, I’ve already got a website/Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Myspace
SEO is to modern marketing what a simple website used to be.
In 2003, not having a website meant that you might be missing out on a few savvy customers trying to find you on the internet. These days, if you don’t have not only a website but a web presence then you are missing out on a HUGE section of the population. Your future customers are looking for you online, whether you’re a butcher, a baker or an accountant.
Besides- your competitors are probably using SEO. So you NEED to be using it too.
4. Once my SEO is set up, I don’t have to worry about it again
Proper, ethical, white hat SEO is a living breathing (dare I say…. ORGANIC???) creature that needs constant love and care. To truly reap the benefits of proper SEO, you need continuity — it’s not a set it and forget it kind of deal.
Things like:
- Thorough reviews of meta titles and meta descriptions on your websites – not just once, but as your business changes
- Technical checkups using tools like Google Search Console
- Deep dives into your Google Analytics to look at landing page performance, organic traffic changes and conversion data
- Checking for new review across Google+ and other review platforms
… all need to be checked on a regular basis. These items are all linked – something being off in Analytics as well as Search Console can speak to a sign that something fishy is happening on your site. Regular maintenance and checkups will help to identify these before they get really out of hand.
Sound too high maintenance? It kind of is. SEO also can’t really be automated – and if someone tells you it can, be sure to run far, far away. If this all sounds great but really overwhelming, contact Adster today to see how we can help manage your SEO!
Stay tuned for common misconceptions about SEO level: intermediate!