Despite all of great resources out there about improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), there are a lot of myths floating around too. Believing in these myths can cause a company or organization to make some serious SEO mistakes and get their site penalized by the search engine.
Flawless Inbound’s Top 5 SEO mistakes to avoid:
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Myth: The More Keywords the Better
Our SEO experts say this is one of the most common SEO myths organizations believe, and one of the mistakes most often made when optimizing content for search engines.
It’s likely you’ve seen one of those web pages that reads something like “Edmonton IT solutions has the best Edmonton IT solutions for businesses that need Edmonton IT solutions.”
This is called Keyword Stuffing, and it is a persistent myth that shoving as many of the same keyword onto a page or into a piece of content will help your site rank for that keyword. This is not true.
In fact, Keyword Stuffing goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and their algorithms are getting better at spotting this and marking it as “bad content.” So, instead of ranking higher for the keyword you’re stuffing onto your page, you could end up getting your site penalized.
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Myth: Keywords Must be Exact Matches
The second most persistent SEO myth relating to keywords is that each and every keyword on the page must be an exact match. That means, if you were trying to rank for Edmonton IT Solutions, you’d have to only use that exact phrase.
Well, not only does this often make for some awkwardly phrased content and headlines, it actually isn’t necessary. Google now uses an algorithm called RankBrain help it understand how some words or phrases are related to each other.
You’ll want to avoid this SEO mistake because constant repetition of the same keyword will not read well with your buyers. It will feel awkward to them, and they’ll likely bounce off your page, which will cause search engines to read your site as poor and decrease your ranking. The best thing you can do to be successful at SEO is use your keywords in a way that reads naturally to your buyers.
Related: Creating a Keyword Strategy that Works
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Myth: Search Engine Submission is Required
“Back in the day” search engines featured submission forms where, after webmasters tagged their sites and pages with keywords, they could submit them to the engine. But spam ended up making this practice not very useful.
While many people still believe that successful SEO requires submitting your site to a search engine, this is no longer true. So you can save yourself some time and focus your SEO strategy efforts elsewhere.
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Myth: Manipulative Linking will Work
Since linking is one of the most common, and successful, methods of off-page SEO, there are always myths floating around about tricking search engines through manipulative linking.
Some common Manipulative Linking tricks include:
- Paid Links
- Link Schemes and Link Farms
- Link Exchanging
Trust us when we say these won’t work. As search engines get smarter and smarter, they’ll get better and better at recognizing these sorts of manipulation. Eventually, you’ll just end up getting your site penalized and losing instead of increasing ranking.
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Myth: The Meta Description is Vital to SEO
Despite the fact that Google announced in 2009 that meta description (the few sentences that appear under a link in a search to describe a site) has no impact on search rankings, it’s still a persistent myth that successful SEO requires optimized meta descriptions. Truthfully, it doesn’t.
That’s not to say meta descriptions aren’t important. They very much are when it comes to click through rate. You’ll want to have a good meta description to stand out from competitors and entice buyers to click onto your website. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you need to focus on keyword optimization in the meta description and end up with one that isn’t attractive to potential buyers.
These were Flawless Inbound’s Top 5 SEO Mistakes to Avoid. Our SEO experts have a lot of experience with SEO, and would be happy to assist your business in perfecting your marketing growth strategy.