To improve and enhance your SEO ranking, you need to follow a proven strategy and create in-depth content. Also, make sure that you back all your data by facts and figures in the blog.
Search engine traffic converts more leads than social media traffic by 9%. Thus, making sure your blog tops the search engine results by optimizing the SEO is crucial. And for that, you need to stop believing SEO myths.
SEO trends keep changing and evolving which let people into believing that some techniques have become obsolete. That is a completely wrong approach, don’t believe anything without proof.
If you follow these trends without researching them, it will distract you from improving your website ranking and traffic.
So when you hear some SEO claiming that their affiliation to Google, take it as a myth. Google doesn’t disclose its partner. In this blog, we will talk about more of these myths that are restricting your search engine optimization from reaching the top.
Here are the myths that you need to stop believing:
Table of Contents
1. Meta tags are not useful
Meta tags provide information to your clients and Google about what your website is all about. You can add them to the head section of your HTML page. They show snippets of the websites in search results with specific keywords.
After the hummingbird update, Meta Tags don’t influence SEO ranking, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t matter.
Meta tags inform users about your website and what it stands for. It makes search engine results for your website more attractive. It improves the chances of users clicking on the link. The users will look for quality content, and Meta tags help with that. It indirectly increases your ranking.
For creating great Meta tags, follow these tips:
- Unique: Don’t make your description similar to other web pages, keep it original and unique.
- Descriptive: The tags should be descriptive. Use keywords and answer why, when, where, whom and how.
- Keep them in limit: 60 characters is their limit. So, describe them, but keep it short too.
2. Guest Posting is dead
In 2014, Matt Cutts said that guest blog posting is dead and a lot of companies panicked. They stopped using post created with guest contributors and other Free or Paid Guest Posting Service. It was because they didn’t understand his statement. What Matt meant was that you should stop using guest bloggers who provide you with crappy and plagiarized content.
Google Panda update pushes down low-quality content to last pages of search engine. So, it doesn’t matter if a guest blogger or your in-built content creator write a piece. If it is low in quality, it will rank down.
Many popular websites like the New York Times still use freelancers and guest blogger. The problem is not them. It’s the poor context value, anchor texts, and links that make guest article rank low.
Tips on using guest post:
- Don’t use blogs with low-quality content.
- Don’t use the word ‘guest blogger’. Write it like you are the in-house content creator.
- Try to provide links within the article and not in the author’s profile.
You can also outsource the guest post service if you don’t have right resources handy.
3. Using only-text based content is enough
Most content creators especially the new ones believe that only-text based content is enough. But it is wrong, you need visuals like illustrations, infographics or simple relevant images in your blog. It helps to attract more users as reading takes time. But if you express information through images, it interests users and stays with them for long.
Also, don’t stop at a cover image, if you do that it will be a disaster.
For a blog to gain the best ranking, you need to put layers to it. The first layer is the text, use original and quality content.
The second layer is the visual one. For that use images, they can be a simple screenshot or stock images and even infographics. Infographics are the best type of image, as it mixes text with pictures to provide relevant data. For creating great infographics, make use of Canva.
The last visual to add to your content is video. It is one of the best and difficult marketing tools. It is impactful, but if you are new at creating content, don’t use it without researching.
4. Long content=higher Google ranking
Another myth that SEO and content creator believe that content with 2000+ word count will always rank higher. Well, actually it’s not always true. There are many factors that ensure your blog gets higher ranking and traffic.
Post hummingbird update, your content should focus on user’s intent and editorial content to rank higher and not only on the word count.
Long content sometimes makes users lose interest especially if they provide any relevant information. So, instead of focusing on word count; focus on link-building and fresh and unique content.
5. Using an XML sitemap boosts search engine rankings
A sitemap is like a guide that helps Google index your fresh pages or updates blogs faster. If you have Google’s XML sitemap generator, it will aid the search engine giant to index your new page in 14 minutes. Without it, it takes Google 1.135 minutes to do the same.
So, a sitemap helps search engines to crawl and index new pages faster. But it doesn’t affect the ranking of your page. It is not a factor in the SEO world which boosts the search engine rankings of your website.
Were you guilty of believing these SEO myths? Well, now you know better. For the future, keep researching and believe facts and figure by renowned sources only.
