10 SEO Myths that Make You Look Stupid
One of the most popular ways to teach people about search engine optimization seems to be to point out what’s wrong about it.
There are plenty of “SEO myths” posts out there and they get shared a lot.
I usually attempt to share truths not myths. In this case I decided to remix a popular “SEO myths” post. That’s demand and supply. You want myths? You can get myths.
While I think that there are bigger myths out there that negate the whole discipline of search engine optimization I nonetheless will ignore the most ridiculous cliches.
When you think “SEO is dead” or “content is king” this is the wrong article for you. I have covered that nonsense many times already in separate articles.
In this article I focus on the myths that some low level SEO practitioners spread to this day. No matter how wrong they are these misconceptions never seem to disappear completely.
I’ll be honest with you. Spreading these myths makes you look stupid. Using these techniques even more. I even feel embarrassed to still have to debunk them.
1. “Your top ten search engine ranking can be guaranteed.”
Some SEO firms will advertise a “guarantee” to have you listed in the top ten rankings of Google. No one other than the search engines themselves can guarantee any ranking. Don’t believe it.
Trust their results for other clients and make your decision from actual client successes, not empty promises and guarantees.
Google states in its Search Console Help: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”
What can be guaranteed though is that when a top 10 or #1 ranking is achieved the payment or rather bonus payment is due.
Then it’s so called “performance based payment“. Payment based on rankings is not recommended though, as rankings themselves do not guarantee sales or overall profits.
2. “My in-house marketer/web designer/programmer can do the SEO cheaper.”
Most search engine optimization professionals can get higher rankings faster because SEO is complex, often technical and has a steep learning curve.
SEO companies sometimes place a whole team at your disposal, including content writers, web developers and link builders. Otherwise you need a generalist who can do it all.
Unless you have a room full of marketing staff dedicated to SEO it is hard to keep up. Even a whole in-house team may struggle because SEO is not just marketing.
It’s optimization and popularization. It requires both technical and social skills. Most people are either geeky or popular.
3. “Just create great content and they will come”
Search engine optimization is probably the best way to get people to view your site. People are searching for the exact products and services which you offer and optimize for.
People are looking for you, not the other way around! Keep in mind you must be using the right keywords though. Random content “for Google” doesn’t help. It rather backfires.
The job of your SEO is to help you choose the both lucrative and doable keywords right from the start. Too broad terms or clickbait headlines like “you won’t believe this” are not findable.
Content by itself without covering the appropriate topics and mentioning terms that are in demand won’t work. It must be very comprehensive by now to be able to compete at all.
Additionally there is so much content out there that nobody will be able to see it without search engine optimization. after an initial phase of social media sharing at best.
4. “You need to submit to social bookmarking sites”
This one is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin! First off: there are no more social bookmarking sites.
They almost ceased to exist. Even the site that invented social bookmarking – Delicious/del.icio.us – got scrapped by now.
Other sites considered “social bookmarking” by those who spread this myth – like Reddit or StumbleUpon – never were about bookmarking in the first place.
Back in 2006 I fell myself for that stupid misconception. I “bookmarked” my sites on Reddit and got banned right away.
Reddit is a social news community. Posting self-promotional off-topic material there is a surefire way to fail.
The same applies to StumbleUpon. It had a filter installed around 2007 that filtered all self-submissions. They got zero views.
“Submitting to social bookmarking sites” does not work in the desired way people do it for link building.
It is like entering an office building with dozens of conference rooms and instead of speaking at your conference entering all the others and shouting your message.
Build an audience instead. Most social sites are about networking these days. Become friends with members of the community.
5. “Simply inserting keywords in the keyword meta tag will help list your site for that keyword”
Most major search engines do not use the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor. When they do it’s probably a negative one!
In case the keyword is not also in the copy of the same page you get penalized for keyword stuffing.
At best the meta keyword tag is used by directories or social bookmarking tools when adding your site to the bookmarks there.
The only really important meta tag is the description as it is displayed in the search results by Google.
You rather need to optimize the meta description tag for people who use search engines and will see it in the actual results.
6. “The more times you repeat the keyword on the page, the higher it will rank”
The so called “keyword density” does not matter as a major ranking factor outside the requirement that the actual keyword is present on the page in the way of natural language.
Depending on where on the page and how the keyword is displayed the ranking can be positively or negatively affected. A keyword density that is too high will get you penalized.
These days we don’t think too much in keywords anymore. It’s about topics you cover and how the relevant words are connected. When you write about the sky make sure to mention
- blue
- clouds
- sun
and rain as well. Simply repeating the same word over and over is rather stupid. It’s not 1997 anymore.
7. “Hidden links or text can get your page ranked higher”
Keyword stuffing and hidden links in the page can get your site penalized or banned if detected. It is considered spamming by search engines.
Most people think it’s not worth the risk. Google states in it’s Webmaster Guidelines: “Avoid hidden text or hidden links.”
Yet to this day I talk to people who say things like “I optimized already a bit by placing invisible keywords”. Should I laugh or cry?
8. “You don’t need to update your site to keep your rankings”
You need routine maintenance (removing outdated material, fixing broken links etc.) and improving your content quality regularly.
By updating you are signaling the bots and crawlers to come back and re-crawl your site for changes to their listings. The algorithms also rate you again.
To maintain high rankings, you need to keep at it and tweak the pages for better results if necessary. Also content freshness is one of the more important ranking factors.
When neglected, your pages could easily slip out of the top rankings as new competing sites get indexed and optimized.
9. “You can achieve higher rankings on a keyword without changing the content of your site”
After Google introduced the Google bombing filter getting a higher ranking solely based on links pointing to your site does not work anymore as already mentioned at 6).
In case you want to steadily improve your rankings, you must make changes to your site that help the search engines to spider it.
Steady results are dependent on your willingness to optimize and tweak the code and content of your pages.
A simple thing like fixing broken links can contribute to elevating your listings. It’s one of the most overlooked search engine tweaks.
10. “Google PageRank is the single most important ranking factor for your site on Google”
While PageRank was never the only factor in ranking sites, it was in the early days of Google the most important one.
Google added more and more ranking factors to their overall algorithm while devaluing PageRank over the years. It was too easy to game.
Nowadays Google’s ranking algorithm is based on more than 200 so called “signals”. PageRank is just one of them. It’s important but won’t suffice.
Do you know other frequently encountered SEO myths? Tell me! I might add them during the next update!
Updated: September 13th, 2018.
Updated: November 20th, 2017. Changed #4 to “submit to social bookmarking sites”. Republished.
Updated: November 3rd, 2017. Clarified and elaborated on some points. Improved readability.
Added teaser image. Added “just create great content” myth. Removed outdated links. Added links to Pole Position Marketing, Backlinko, SEMrush.
Hey Tad a nice comeback. I think however you’re always going to run into “naysayers’ LOL with black and white statements about “how search engines work”.
For instance….No9 – what if the page was fairly well designed in the first place, and all you had to do was build a few quality links first – but yes, Google Bombing is ‘reported’ not to work – splitting hairs here of course – but do you believe everything Google reps tell you?
Also, in no10 when discussing PageRank, it might be worth mentioning the nuance between real pagerank and google toolbar page rank although I appreciate you are trying to keep this simple.
On the whole a better piece than the one you were ‘harassed’ for! :)
Thanks Hobo for the quick feedback.
As to #9: You are right to distrust Google. I tried it myself though and besides there were no other really successful Google bombs reported. The ones that worked either were really easy terms or the pages contained the term as in “failure” and George Bush.
As to #10: This is a primer for the SEO newbie or rather client not familiar with real SEO. I do not want to add every possible info but to create an easily digestible overview. Thus the toolbar PageRank/internal PageRank differentiation is in the linked article.
Cheers Tad – This is fun isn’t it :)
“To maintain high rankings, you need to keep at it and tweak the pages for better results if necessary.”
That would depend I think on the amount of trust and authority a site has, and it’s ranking history, and the level of competition a term has, and of course, how well optimised it was in the first place.
Of course, optimisation is better over time, with analysis, but I fear some will continue to pick holes!
Nicely cleared up, though I don’t get the “I was greeted with an incredible amount of criticism” sentiment.
The way I see it, Sebastian and the others who commented were being critical of the original article, not making a personal attack on you Tad.
A bit of healthy debate is always useful, no?
Yeah Hobo. Do not forget though that ranking factors change over time so you really have to tweak your site.
Gavin: Thanks for pointing out my great/greet typo.
There was indeed no direct personal attack on me like saying that “I’m an idiot” or something but if you read through the “desphinn” explanations you start to wonder why these people, some of them do not submit anathing much to Sphinn, get this overzelous in putting the thing down.
A simple comment saying “there is mistake in the article” would be perfectly enough.
While I agree certain Ranking Factors are subject to change over time, could we agree the basic principles for ranking a site have not changed for many a year? :)
Not that I’m arguing the point too strongly – if I were employed to optimise a site, I certainly wouldn’t do it once and then leave it – athough actualy that depends on how much I am being paid and if it is an ongoing arrangement.
SEO for me is a very creative process based on observations – every time I look at a job I make tweaks as you get new ideas or hear about or observe something you may have forgotten.
For me it is about constant change, but then again I am always ‘experimenting’ – and is ‘experimentation’ ‘optimisation’?
Hobo: Basically the emphasis is on the fresh content. You certainly won’t tweak the code daily just for the sake of SEO ;-)
Mark: Yes, I know the first case which is not in the top 10 currently:
http://www.google.com/search?name=f&hl=en&q=Dangerous+Cult
While “dangerous cult” was not really a “competitive term” before so it may have worked for a few days due to lack of other good results.
“Operation Clambake” has “Scientology” in its title etc. so it’s not Google bombing without onsite factors.
Actually there has been a very recent Googlebomb that has done fairly well. The Anonymous Scientology Googlebomb has pushed Scientology’s site to number one for Dangerous Cult and pushed Operation Clambake near the top for the term Scientology. I wrote a bit about it on my blog “The Mother of All Googlebombs”.
Quite being so sensitive…the original article was crap. Badly presented. Not factual. Promotional.
If an article is presenting “truths” to dispute “myths” then it needs to be 100% correct.
It isn’t very positive to promote non-truths or bad content.
I’ve never thumbed something down and it was my first desphinn ever and I stand by my opinion of the original piece.
Correcting the article with your own opinions here is commendable, but your attitude throughout this process (including here) has only served to further antagonize negative feedback.
I also particularly like how people get fixated on getting their site submitted to [insert ridiculously high number here] search engines.
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Hi Tad, I don’t agree with you on some things, but I DO agree with you totally on your 10 myths. Very good.
Matter of fact; I read that article you “spinned” the other day and could not believe the backlash it got from the “inner circle” people. I actually thought the article was not bad at all. Oh sure; a couple of things could have been better, but sheesh; from what I see at that spin site that gets to the front page, that article was VERY good stuff. Most stuff at that place is very poor shite and that article you spinned was NOT one of those. The only part of it I didn’t think was right was the thing about the % for keyword density…. that’s it. It shouldn’t have been in there at all.
For all of you bozos in our industry who are claiming you can guarantee ranks…. you are wrong. For how long? one day, one hour, one week, one month?…. for what phrases?… I could go on and on. ANYONE who claims a guaranteed position will never explain it in detail to the client. The guarantee is baseless and is only stated as a marketing ploy to deceive a poor sole who visits the page on your site with that silly guarantee. Period. Anyone can claim a guarantee, but it’s the details of it that will get you in the end. Stay far away from jerks in our industry who claim a guarantee.
I criticize when I think it’s necessary, but I always praise when I think praise is due as well………nice job.
I’ll give an example:
About two years ago I talked to a prior client of a firm the poor guy hired just because they were a speaker at SES. The client told me they had a guarantee as well. I read that guarantee’s fine print. It did not mention in what way they guaranteed anything. At the end, the poor guy got hosed. He did not get any first page positions on phrases he wanted, but the firm told him he actually did. They pointed to the Google Adwords listing on the first page and told him that satisfied their guarantee.
YES: it’s true. No name will be outed here as I do think the firm has went strictly to doing PPC stuff now and has changed it’s ways. Just goes to show that being a speaker can be very deceiving…… as it’s proved MANY times over the years…..TopPile anyone? Also goes to show that it’s the details of a guarantee you must read and totally understand.
The biggest bull out of the whole bunch is the PR myth. I for one don’t give a damn and could care less if my PR was 0 or 10 for that matter. Nice writeup btw.
-Tibi
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I think number 4 is especially relevant. Many web designers like to boast that their sites are SEO friendly. Yet, their own sites don’t even rank in the top 30 for web design in their location. This alone should be a red flag.
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well the age of the website seems to be an important factor these days. Google will favor older website a lot more and will rank them a lot faster than a fresh website with a fresh domain.
8. “You don’t need to update your site to keep your rankings” – that is NOT a Myth.
All my websites are static. Some haven’t been updated for over 3 years. And still rank well.
Good article.There are lots misconception among web users regarding Page Rank.
Google page rank is the biggest prank played by google which simply refuses to die.
Several blind and dumb webmasters are calculating page ranks daily without knowing that the green fluid has nothing to do with their traffic/visitors/clients/queries/sales or even SEO rankings.
I also don’t think you need to change your website in order to increase your ranking, though it helps to increase the crawling
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Thanks for this. Content freshness stood out as my weakest area – will take some positive action.
You are welcome Neil!
Sometimes even changing the “last updated” date and fixing a few typos may give a ranking boost.
Google watches your content and when you never update it you lose ground gradually.
Thanks for the imagery. I am guilty for getting into conferences and not attempting to have a discussion but making alot of noise. Your right about approaching SEO in a social way.
Hey Alphonse!
I’m not sure what you refer to. Did you comment on the wrong post?
There seems to be no context.
This post deals with common but nonetheless very wrong SEO myths.
In general I agree with you. That’s what I’ve been saying for years.
Sincerely, tad
Above all, I read the first myth over and over again. Such statements can be very tempting, especially for SEO newbies, when it comes to choosing an SEO agency. I think it’s good and important that you list a few of the most common myths here so that those interested in SEO keep them in mind.