How much of an impact does uniqueness of content and use of keywords have on the ranking of your website? Is there any impact at all?

SEO myths can harm your site more than it can help it. Learn how!

SEO myths do not stay hidden for long. You might have noticed how the off-page and on-page content of different websites differ in terms of use of keyword strategy, content engagement, technical setup and page performance. Improvements can always be made, however certain SEO practices in 2019 have shown little to no improvement in the SERP ranking of several websites. These practices are myths of SEO.

First Myth - SEO has Fixed Rules: We must know by now that Google’s algorithms change. Yes there are some basic rules that you must follow for white hat SEO practices, however, Google constantly changes some of the rules to prevent black hat and gray hat SEO from spreading its wings.

With experience we have learned that the rules even differ when it comes to the type of business or website in question. Websites can rank differently depending on content, bounce rate, search engine optimization, and visitor traffic. So, there are rules to the practice but there are no fixed rules.

Second Myth - Once You’re Ranking You Can Stop SEO: Logically speaking, this would make no sense. SEO is an on-going thing, and you will be far behind in the ranking competition if you do not practice SEO for the 1st SERP ranking. The backlinking, blog writing, social media posts writing, press release posting, domain authority guest posting and all the other SEO activities do not have an end if you’re looking at reaching the top and staying up there.

The on-going process of practicing SEO doesn’t have a stop. Also, following the downright obsolete practices might not be as helpful as you might think. In fact, you’ll have to keep up with the recent SEO rules by search engines and update your digital marketing strategy accordingly.

Third Myth - Google AdWords Affects SEO: If there’s someone telling you that running paid ad campaigns are also going to improve your page ranking on Google, they are wrong. The only way that could be the case is if you get tremendous amount of traffic to your website and the bounce rate is really low during the time you ran the ad campaign. This would tell Google that the content on your website is worth their attention. Other than this, no, Google AdWords doesn’t help you with SEO Same goes for Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads and other such social media ads. They are not very different from Pay-per-click ads. Google AdWords however, has proven to deliver more productive traffic than social media ads.

Fourth Myth - SEO is All About Freshness of Content: Honestly, freshness of content has a huge impact on the SERP ranking, however, this is not the main or only factor of the greatest importance in SEO. Freshness of content is important for blogs and news sites. It is not very important for service and product-based websites.

Keeping your content fresh can help you get subscribers and regular visitors, however, it is only one of the many factors to work on when it comes to SEO.

Fifth Myth - SEO Leads to Ranking within a Month: Google doesn’t hate you but practicing black hat SEO is the only way you can rank on the first page within a month. When you go through the genuine route you’ll have to be patient. It can take a minimum of three months and a maximum of one year to rank on the first page of Google.

We don’t advise going ahead with black hat or gray hat SEO practices, as there are serious consequences to your website for this. Google doesn’t approve of you trying to trick them to rank on top. It will catch you and penalize you. So, no SEO is no magic, and it is going to try your patience before you see satisfactory results.

Apart from these some of the myths that you might hear are:

Keywords are the only way to rank on search engines: This is not true. Keywords are important but they are not the only way you can rank.

Once you practice SEO, you do not need a unique selling proposition: Another strange myth. You might not have a unique selling proposition yet, but like every individual with unique qualities and something different to offer, your business would need to be more creative and have a selling point for a better ranking.

Tell us if you know of any other SEO myths. Thanks for reading!