Put simply, SEO is not something you can learn, or even understand the basics of, overnight. It's an involved process that is constantly shifting and changing. Just as soon as you think you have a grasp on it, there is a change and everything needs to be revisited.
However, we still think it's extremely important for the businesses we work with to have a basic understanding of what SEO is and how it works as it helps us to do our jobs working on your digital marketing better.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it the process of optimizing your website in a way that improves your rank on search engines. When people search for a topic, it's not likely that they navigate past the first page, and even less likely that they check past pages two and three. So businesses want their websites to rank within the first few pages of search results, and ideally, within the first few links.
There is so much that goes into search engine optimization, and the rules and algorithms are always changing as the internet grows and evolves. This is why there is so much misinformation out there--something that may have been a best practice five years ago, or even two years ago simply doesn't work anymore. But people don't know that unless they stay up-to-date with all of Google's (and the other less popular engines) changes.
So we wanted to go over a few SEO myths that are still thrown around among business owners and marketers who aren't really the SEO "experts" they claim to be, as well as what the best practices these days actually are.
1. Hiring an expert gets you on the first page quickly.
No, no, no, and no.
If someone is promising you instant results through SEO, do not believe a thing they are saying. They are scamming you. Or they just have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Either way, you want to run in the opposite direction and fast.
Search engine optimization takes time, no matter what. The best analogy is that SEO is like a big ocean freighter, it is not very mobile and definitely takes time to turn. The reason for this is simple, none of the search engines want you to know how to "game the system". There are lots of levers to pull, and the only way to know which one's to pull is to be perpetually testing. And furthermore, best practices are always changing, which means your expert or agency needs to stay on top of your account, constantly making tweaks to keep it relevant.
Google receives over 3.5 billion searches everyday, across a wealth of different niches, so the very idea that anyone could quickly get your website to the top of those organic search results is simply nonsense.
2. You need all of the backlinks to your website that you can get.
Link building is an incredibly popular SEO strategy, and it's one that still works today. However, many people don't fully understand how it works.
You may have received an email from a link builder at some point asking you to put their business's link in a particular relevant blog post. They're working on building up that website's SEO, and putting backlinks on established websites with quality content is the absolute best way to do that.
However, it's important to note that quality over quantity absolutely applies in this strategy. If a poorly designed website without reputable content that no one visits has thousands of links to your website, it's not nearly as important as one of the top websites in your industry having even 1 or 2 links back to your website.
Google's algorithm is smart and it pays attention to the types of sites that are linking to your website. The more reputable the source, the more reputable it deems your website.
3. User experience is just a recommendation, not a requirement.
Many business owners don't realize how much having a poor design and poor overall user experience on their website can hurt their search engine rankings.
If your website is difficult to navigate, if it doesn't have a mobile responsive version, or if its load time takes too long, people will click away from your website, and Google keeps track of this. If people don't want to be on your website, the search engine is not going to send them to it.
Remember that Google's main concern is finding and showing the best and most relevant content possible. If it starts placing bad websites that don't have relevant content at the top of search results, people aren't going to want to use Google anymore.
So their number one goal is completely self-serving--showing the best possible search results to keep all of the users on their search engine. And user experience on your website is absolutely a factor in whether or not you're one of the best possible search results.
4. I don't need to worry about mobile SEO.
Again, false. We covered this briefly in user experience, but with more and more users conducting searches from mobile, Google has switched up the algorithm to penalize websites that don't have a mobile responsive design.
If your website isn't optimized for use on smartphones and tablets, you're losing some serious SEO points. Be sure your design is responsive and adjusts to easily fit smaller screens, or at the very least, you have a separate mobile design.
To further cement how important it is to have mobile optimization, the search engine is introducing a mobile-first index this year.
This means that they'll actually be taking a look at how well the mobile version of your website works for users before even looking at your desktop version. So it's more important now than ever to ensure mobile responsiveness on your site.
5. SEO is basically just keyword optimization.
Actually, keyword optimization is just one facet of SEO. It is far from being the only part. Keyword optimization is essentially finding top keywords that people are searching for in your business and using them in your content.
This is definitely something you should do with all of your content. Every page of your website should be written and optimized by a copywriter, and you should choose focus keywords for each of your blog posts.
However, it should not be your only solution or your end-all to SEO.
In addition, many people believe that you have to use the exact match of the keyword in your blog or website content. The reality is that Google's machine learning algorithm is able to pinpoint varieties of keywords or words out of order and still produce them in search results. So don't worry if you need to change the tense of your keyword so it makes sense in a sentence--the search engines will figure it out.
If you're ready to get started improving the SEO on your website and increasing your search engine rank, contact us today! We'd love to help you out.
Written By: Doug Milnor
