According to neilpatel.com, search traffic converts 9% better than social media traffic. In order to get that, you should be aware of some SEO misconceptions that you need to avoid. Seeking expert service from a SEO company will help to improve website ranking and search traffic by avoiding those misconceptions. SEO is constantly changing according to Google’s algorithm and if you don’t stay abreast with those, you cannot boost your rankings and traffic. Google is trying to provide the best user experience, so the days where you could simply do keyword stuffing and links to boost your ranking are gone.
When implementing SEO, you need to be wary about some misconceptions regarding search engine optimization. Take a look at some of these given below:
- Misconception 1 – More outgoing links boosts your SEO: This is one of the huge misconceptions that can negatively impact your SEO efforts. Having more outgoing links on your website is not bad, they are just neutral in most cases. Linking to other websites improves their SEO not yours. You need both quality content and links for the best results.
- Misconception 2 – Content is King: You will find this statement in many articles, blogs and other resources. While it is not completely wrong, content is less of a king and more like a valuable business partner to links, design and usability. You must have both quality content and quality backlinks. Also, there are long-tail queries that rank without links, this is because they are so unique and there is no competition for them. Here links don’t play an active role like they do in a competitive query.
- Misconception 3 – Content Requires No Optimization: When you write the best piece of content about say “Best protein powder”, straight from the gut and you feel that the content worked, there you might imagine that adding keywords or optimizing your content is not necessary. But the truth is, Google uses an algorithm, it needs keywords and phrases in your web content to make it possible for users to find your site. Optimized content should include proper keywords in the right place, meta and title tags, relevant links and this is very important to generate more organic and social media traffic as well as to improve overall user experience.
- Misconception 4 – Speed is not that important: If your site has a severe page speed issue, increasing your page speed can dramatically improve your rankings. A faster site is much easier for Googlebot to crawl. This means that cutting down the loading time of a page from 22 seconds to 8 seconds can increase your ranking very fast.
When evaluating the page speed, Google measures how long the Direct Object Model (DOM) takes to load. The DOM items are the items that are visible on the page excluding ads, if you have stacked your load right. This means that if you can cut down the DOM loading time from 22 seconds to 8 seconds, then Google will reward you for this dramatic decrease.
- Misconception 5 – Hire an SEO agency to get top rankings: This is one of the most interesting misconceptions. No experts can guarantee you top Google rankings in this age. You might need an SEO agency for keyword analysis and competitive auditing to help with content marketing and metric analysis and adjustment. But you cannot include quick rankings in one of those reasons. It is because Google handles over 100 billion searches per month, and no SEO can predict tomorrow’s keywords, so it is almost impossible for anyone to promise you fast search rankings.
- Misconception 6 – Quantity matters more than quality: Search engine algorithms are getting smarter in order to provide the best user experience. You can decide the quantity but it is very important that the intention of writing content is to provide relevant and useful information and a solution to the problem that the users are looking for. Make sure your content covers users search intent, Google can recognize whether you provide quality content and rewards you for that.
- Misconception 7 – Rankings are everything: You may achieve a good rank from your SEO practices. But to achieve more benefits your ranking needs to be combined with other factors such as audience relevance and website traffic to get good Return of Investment.
Look beyond rankings and concentrate on these four SEO metrics:
- Increase in organic search traffic
- Increase in organic search traffic per keyword
- Increase in conversions from organic search traffic
- Increase in conversions from organic search traffic per keyword
- Misconception 8 – SEO saves us all: SEO is powerful but it is not a magic potion that can improve your business within days or weeks. When a company is falling, it is very late to use SEO techniques to save you from that. It is a strategy that needs proper planning and time to work.
Now you know the common SEO misconceptions that can affect your hard work. Digital marketing experts are aware of the misconceptions and help you avoid them so that you can achieve the best results for your website.
