Myths abound when it comes to Search Engine Marketing, SEO. The misinformation is available online, so anyone can access it- which can lead to confusion for SEOs and their clients. We’ll set the record straight.
First of all, SEO is a process meant to make a website or webpage appear on search engine (Google or Bing, etc) results pages when someone types in words or phrases relevant to the site. SEOs strive to make their clients’ websites/pages appear in a competitive position, namely the top spot on the first results page.
Myth #1- Search Engines rank a webpage based on keyword density
Spammy-looking webpages, meaning pages that are literally stuffed with keywords in every sentence, should never serve as examples of proper SEO. Contrary to what many SEO novices, business owners and others believe, SEO does not revolve around stuffing keywords into webpages. Keywords are important, but search engines don’t need pages to be chock full of them to rank them well in the results.
Myth #2 – Meta Tags are important
They were at one time, but like many other ancient SEO practices (from the late 1990s), meta tags were spammed by subpar SEOs and now it’s the title tags (not stictly a meta tag, but often grouped with them) that have become a pillar of the SEO process.
Myth #3 – Paid search (PPC) helps organic results and traffic
Search engine advertising, like pay-per-click (PPC) does not have a bearing on the ranking/spot a website lands on when someone searches for a related keyword in a search engine.
There are a variety of “bad: practices that can alter how search engines rank a website.
Make sure the site you manage is free from the following:
Massive changes: Changing a website’s content, internal link structure, moving pages around or just making other edits may affect the way search engines crawl or view the site’s content. Be sure to account for these changes in any tracking you do.
Duplicate Content: Identical copy on various web pages within the same sight can be a major hindrance to a site’s credibility in the eyes of search engines.
