Search engine optimization is growing and is super important for all online businesses if they hope to compete in the online business world. With the emergence of search engine optimization companies came the myth’s that have developed about SEO. Not everything you hear from these companies or read online is true. That is why you have to be careful and separate the facts from the myths. Many of these myths may have been speculation or maybe they used to be facts but no longer is the case. Search engine optimization is constantly changing so many things that people thought about SEO is no longer the case. A lot of quote unquote professional SEO companies have never changed up their strategies even though Google and other search engines have changed their algorithms. Let’s take a look at some of these myths so that you will be aware of them and hopefully not fall for them when they are told to you.
- All Guest Posts are Bad – Matt Cutts posted a blog about how people are abusing guest posts and said you can stick a fork in it. You may be thinking how this doesn’t sound like a myth. Well, this is exactly how the myth came about. After reading this many SEO professionals began saying that all guest posts are bad and saying that you need to stop. Not all guest posts are bad. Mr. Cutts was simply talking about the way they are used as spam. People had began writing guest posts for the lone purpose of obtaining back links and this is bad. However, if you are writing guests posts with the primary goal of popularity and visibility then you will be fine. Just don’t go throw up crappy content in hopes that you will get back links for it. This has caused a lot of spam on the web and this is what I believe Matt Cutts was referring too.
- Social Media Drives SEO – This is one that many of you may believe and follow because this has been around for a few years. Many businesses have signed up for Social Media in order to simply try to improve their search engine rankings. They aren’t using their social media sites how they should and to be honest most of these businesses do not even have real followers. Most of their followers were purchased as a way to try to trick the search engines in to believing that they are more popular than they actually are. Well, the joke is on them because this isn’t looked at by the search engines. Now, I am not saying your business should not have social media pages. Social Media campaigns are extremely important but in order to be successful they need to be done the right way. They need to be setup to engage potential customers and not setup as a place to post sales pitches or to use to try and rank higher in the search engines. I know that many of you probably do not believe me so here is a message from Matt Cutts himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udqtSM-6QbQ.
- Google Search is in Trouble – This one reminds me of the old saying, “you know your on top when people are hating on you.” This is what I believe is happening here. You have people that do not like Google and because of this fact they are trying to get people to use other search engines. So then the myth was started that their on the decline and this could not be further from the truth. Most people can clearly see this is not the case. Google’s market share is staying at about 68% in the USA so there is no real threat to Google at this moment.
- Content is All That Matters Today – Yes, content is very very important and always will be when it comes to SEO. However, content is not the only thing that matters to the search engines. You still have to do things to get the search engines to crawl your site, back links, etc. You still need to keep up with the latest algorithm and work to rank your site on the search engines. Remember that search engine’s goal is to deliver the most relevant content to the people using their search engine. This will constantly be getting updated.
These are just some of the many myths that are out there about search engine optimization. The danger of this is that many small online business owners look to professional SEO companies to help them with their online marketing campaigns without knowing anything about search engine optimization. So this allows search engine optimization companies to either knowingly rip off their clients or it allows people who may not fully understand SEO to start a business and sell their services. They are able to use tricky tactics so that they can show their clients what appear to be good reports. One of the more popular ways they do this is by ranking for keywords that don’t have any competition. The reason they don’t have any competition is because nobody searches for those keywords. So it doesn’t matter that your business is ranking for those keywords because nobody will see it anyways. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those types of companies out there. That is why you are going to have to do your research and hire a search engine optimization company that knows what they are doing and one that has a prove track record.