What is one of the most popular ways to teach people?

It’s by showing how to get things wrong or fail in other words.

It’s not just about search engine optimization!

The easiest way to show how something works seems to be to point out how it does not.

There are plenty of “SEO myths” posts out there and they get shared a lot.

This is not just one of them. This is about stupid SEO myths!

Why share myths in the first place?

I usually attempt to share truths not myths.

Why? Debunking myths usually just reinforces them.

It just makes the myths get the attention.

Thus they also get memorized as important again.

One day I decided to remix a popular “SEO myths” post. That was like 20 years ago.

I updated the post ever since. This is it!

That’s demand and supply. You want myths? You can get myths.

There are bigger myths out there that negate the whole discipline of search engine optimization.

Yet I nonetheless will ignore the most ridiculous cliches.

Do you think that “SEO is dead” or “content is king“? Then this is the wrong article for you.

I have covered that nonsense many times already in separate articles.

SEO myths that still get spread

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. Fake ranking guarantees

Myth: “Your top ten search engine ranking can be guaranteed.”

Some agencies 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.

Unless you buy Google Ads to show on top in the “sponsored results”.

Trust their results for other clients and look up existing case studies.

Make your decision based on actual client success stories you have verified using SEO tools.

Ignore empty promises and guarantees.

Google states in their SEO fundamentals: “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.

The same warning applies to traffic.

I can put up free porn on your site or use bots to artificially inflate your traffic.

SEO guarantees are often fake and a red flag to look out for!

 

2. Offloading SEO tasks to other professionals

Myth: “My in-house marketer/designer/programmer can do the SEO.”

Most search engine optimization professionals can get results faster. Why?

SEO is complex, intricate, often technical and has a steep learning curve.

SEO companies sometimes place a whole team at your disposal, including

• content creators (for content SEO/marketing)
• outreach specialists (for social SEO/digital PR)
• web developers (for technical SEO)

Otherwise you need a generalist who can do it all or a whole team.

Unless you have a room full of marketing staff dedicated to SEO it is hard to keep up. Even an entire 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.

Thus just offloading your SEO tasks to a marketer etc. won’t cut it!

At least you need a full website or ideally online presence audit.

Then you employees or other freelancers can take care of it.

Even based on an audit results often are mixed though as a lot of mistakes happen in the process.

 

3. Content as one-size-fits-all solution

Myth: “Just create great content and they will come.”

You can mass produce content by using AI nowadays.

Yet it won’t work. Google calls it “scaled content abuse” by now.

Search engine optimization is probably the best way to get people to view your site.

Yet when you perform SEO you create content that is laser-focused.

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 SEO.

After an initial phase of attention due to social media sharing at best it will get forgotten.

Thus just creating “me too” content or meaningless fluff from chatbots won’t get you search visitors from Google.

The opposite is the case. Low level content that is not helpful gets demoted by Google!

 

4. Manual link building like decades ago

Myth: “You need to build links by inserting them on third party sites.”

This one is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin!

First off: there is no more manual link building that does make much sense other than outreach.

It almost ceased to exist. Even outreach – as sending messages to strangers – fails most of the time for years by now.

Other sites considered for “manual link building” by those who spread this myth – like Reddit or Quora – never were about link building in the first place.

Back in 2006 I fell myself for that stupid misconception. I “submitted” my sites on Reddit and got banned right away.

Reddit is a community site. Posting self-promotional or off-topic material there is a surefire way to fail.

The same applies to most other UGC (user generated content) sites.

Search engines introduced the nofollow attribute back in 2005 that declared most self built links negligible.

“Sharing links” 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.

It’s one of the most common social media management mistakes despite this.

Build an audience instead.

Most social sites are about networking these days. Become friends with members of the community.

 

5. Keywords in meta tags

Myth: “Simply adding keywords to meta tags helps your site to show up for them.”

Most major search engines like the market dominating Google do not count keywords in meta tags as a ranking factor.

When they do it’s probably a negative one!

It raises a red flag when you stuff meta tags, footers, or invisible elements with keywords.

The meta description is just for enticing people!

You have to mention the keyword you deal with in the title.

Also mention it at least once or twice in the main content area. Do not overdo it.

The keyword does not also get mentioned in the body text of the same page?

Then you may also get penalized for keyword stuffing.

The “meta” title is also used by third party tools when adding your site to bookmarks.

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. Keyword stuffing

Myth: “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.

The actual keyword needs to be present on the page in the way of natural language. That’s all.

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.

10% of our words are the keyword? That’s spam.

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.

Simply repeating the same word over and over is rather stupid. It’s not 1997 anymore.

Also in the AI era natural language is even more important. AI can detect repetitive patterns with ease.

And you want to sound like a real human being. Most people hate both AI slop and keyword gibberish.

 

7. Hidden links or text

Myth: “Hidden links or text can get your page ranked higher.”

This one is really embarrassing.

Hidden links or text can get your site penalized or banned if detected.

It’s really easy to detect those, even when you use CSS or JS to hide them. Google can read both.

It is considered spamming by search engines from day one.

Most people think it’s not worth the risk.

Google has a whole section on hiding elements in it’s spam policies called “hidden text and link abuse“.

A potential client once told me “I optimized already a bit by placing invisible keywords”.

Should I laugh or cry?

Hide content or links only for UX reasons (think hamburger menus on mobile).

 

8. Stale content

Myth: “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 systems. Google says:

“We have various “query deserves freshness” systems designed to show fresher content for queries where it would be expected.”

When neglected, your pages could easily slip out of the top rankings as new competing sites get indexed and optimized.

Just regularly update your existing content. Don’t let it rot!

 

9. No helpful content

Myth: “You can achieve high rankings without helpful content on your site.”

After Google introduced the Google bombing filter getting a higher ranking solely based on links stopped working.

Thus just pointing more backlinks to your empty site does not work anymore.

Do you want to steadily improve your rankings?

You have to make ongoing changes to your content that help the search engine users to answer their questions.

Steady results are dependent on your willingness to optimize and tweak the content of your pages.

I do that for decades by now!

Yet you need content in the first place.

Empty sites don’t rank at all by now. Yet fluffy automated AI content won’t cut it either!

You need to add actually helpful content that solves real life problems and stays current.

A simple measure like updating existing content already makes a difference!

Changes like fixing broken links can contribute to growing organic reach. It’s still one of the most overlooked search engine tweaks.

 

10. Chasing ranking factors

Myth: “This or that is the most important ranking factor for your site on Google.”

Even when Google introduced their original PageRank algorithm it was never the only factor in ranking sites.

Yet in the early days of Google it was the most important one.

Over the years that changed.

Google added more and more ranking factors to their overall algorithm while devaluing PageRank. It was too easy to game.

Nowadays Google’s ranking algorithm is based on around 14 thousand of so called “signals”. 

The original PageRank is just one of them. It’s still somewhat important but won’t suffice.

It also applies to all the other signals.

Don’t just tweak your site for one specific metric Google applies.

For example many people try to “chunk” their content for AI features.

Yet SEO is not that simplistic.

Provide helpful content, a user friendly site and and overall good experience.

When you match keywords and user intent with content plus have some authority you may be lucky.

Don’t just chase a single ranking factor though!

 

What else is there to cover?

Do you know other frequently encountered SEO myths?

Tell me! I might add them during the next update!

Or better just share SEO truths. I might feature them as well!

I’m onreact all over the place (think Gmail, LinkedIn e.g).