Top 10 SEO Myths Debunked! Are You Guilty of Thinking Any of These Things?

Top 10 SEO Myths Debunked! Are You Guilty of Thinking Any of These Things?

When it comes to SEO, doing SEO, knowing how to do SEO, where to get SEO, a lot of people can think some of the things on this top 10 SEO myths list that prevents them from doing those things. But I'm here today to debunk some of those myths and put you right so you can know better, be smarter and find more success for your business through the world of SEO!

1. Google Doesn't Care About My Website and Isn't Actively Checking it Out.
Wanna bet? Google's motto is "don't be evil" and Google is all about quality control. Google wants the people that use its Search Engine to find websites, be protected and not visit a nefarious site that could harm them in some way. So Google really does care about your site, but only from the perspective that it's a safe site for people to use. If it's not, they care about that and don't want to send people to it. And no website is exempt from being crawled and indexed by Google that goes out to find and crawl sites looking for spammy or broken links and other red flags that could get you a penalty. Not unless you use the nofollow/noindex tag but that would just be counter productive!

2. I'll Rank #1 if I Just Do Everything Right.
Even if you do everything right, all by the ball and exactly how Google says, there's still no guarantee that your site will rank high because of it. And any SEO agency, company or firm or anyone else that provides SEO services tells you they can rank you high rankings in the SERPs is either lying to you or are seriously deluded and don't know much about SEO in the first place. There's no guarantee of top rankings when it comes to SEO. Sure, SEO can help, but it's a help not a guarantee. You'll do well to remember that!

3. I Don't Need to SSL My Site Since It's Not an Ecommerce Site.
It doesn't matter if your small site that doesn't sell anything and doesn't have any login pages etc. Google has a mission to protect everyone that uses the Internet and SSL is now a ranking factor. It's not a huge ranking factor but simply put, those sites that aren't using SSL may find it harder to rank higher because they haven't installed an SSL certificate. And that's easy to do today!

4. I Don't Need to Optimise My Images.
Google isn't a human being, it's a machine, and machines just can't see what's on images yet. They don't know if it's an apple or an orange or a picture of a dog or a hot air balloon! All images on your site must contain helpful file names and Alt tags to help Search Engines and people know what they're about!

5. My Rankings Aren't Impacted by Social Media.
What planet are you from? What rock did you crawl out from under of? Only kidding! But there is now direct corelation between good rankings and your social signals count. Those shares your content gets on social media sites, and the shares those shares get and so on, and how well established you are across the full spectrum of social media sites, absolutely does impact your rankings today!

6. I Need to Use My Keywords Many Many Times in My Content.
Yeah if you want to get marked as a black hat site that engages in a shady, black hat practices! This is known as "Keyword Stuffing" and it's the practice of including your keywords many many times over in your content, in the title, in the meta title and description, in the images etc etc. And while all those should contain your targeted keywords, try to do it only once or twice at the most!

7. People Will Know How to Find Everything on My Site.
People who visit your site will only know how to navigate it if they can clearly see how to! A site with a clear navigation is a site that provides a good UX (User Experience). Search Engine spiders can see if there are any broken links or dead ends that create navigation errors on your site which upsets people and makes them x out quick. So make sure your site has a clear navigation panel or menu on each and every page on your site. And for crying out loud! For sites with 10+ more pages, add a sitemap will you!

8. I'm a Small Business / Website So Will Never Rank High Anyway.
That is something that is easy to think if you are. Since you can feel overwhelmed with all you need to do to "SEO" your site. But Google has put a lot of emphasis on Local SEO today so it's possible to optimize your site for local keywords that are relevant to your local small business. Of which, you can get some great results no matter how small a business you are!

9. I Don't Need to Optimize my Site for Mobile
Mobile usage has increased by 600% since 2010 and is set to increase even more. The same can't be said about desktop and laptop users as that's basically stayed about the same. These days of course, if someone is visiting your site, there is a very good chance they are doing so from their mobile phone. Does your site look right and work right (as it should) on mobile? You need to optimize it for mobile for these reasons. Or did you want to lose business?

10. I Only Need One SEO Service.
SEO isn't a one time thing my friend. It's a constantly changing, evolving and learning thing. And you can bet your back teeth that your competitors/rivals etc will also be doing SEO to try and outrank you. Or keep from being outranked by you! SEO is something that you'll always need to do if you are to get and keep those high rankings in the Search Engines today.

Conclusion.
In a world that's mostly dominated by SEO. A world where you simply cannot survive unless you do it (to your site). It's easy for people to think about doing some things that need to be done in this way and "excuse" themselves from doing it by saying one of the things on this myths list. But once you learn about why you shouldn't think like that, it makes things a lot clearer to understand about why you should do them.

What about you? Have you ever thought any of these things as an excuse not to do them?

What other SEO myths do you know of that people often say today?