Search Engine Optimization and Digital Marketing are industries that have spawned their fair share of misinterpretations and myths. Years of interacting with esoteric rules, invisible algorithms, and surface explanations for website ranking phenomena… it has led to various beliefs and answers for why certain things work or should work.
Point of clarification though… SEO isn’t really as cryptic and unknowable as some people make it out to be. The complicated nature of the math and coding used to create search algorithms has muddied the waters and can make it tough to understand every single potential permutation in rankings, value, authority, traffic, and so on. But we do have a good grasp on best practices. Google and Bing may not say “do X to add Y points to your site” but we do know how and why certain things will cause manual or algorithmic penalties, what practices are considered deceptive, and why it is best to write for people and not machines.
With all of that in mind, we wanted to take a look at some of the more persistent SEO Myths floating around out there. Hopefully, we can help put some of these to rest finally or at least expand your own understanding of how and why SEO works.
5 Persistent Myths About Search Engine Optimization
1. SEO is a “One-and-Done” Thing
Many people out there have heard about SEO, understand that their website could benefit from SEO, and do a decent amount of research into best practices. Then they update their titles and meta descriptions, write some fresh content, maybe set up a GBP listing, and forget about ever checking in again.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard business owners lament about how SEO doesn’t work, or they don’t understand why their site isn’t doing well when it’s been SEO’d already… only to find out they hired a company a three years ago to do the basics and then no one has touched it since. What some people fail to grasp is that SEO is not a one-and-done thing.
You don’t “SEO” a site at launch and expect it to be perfect forever. In some cases, this is because so many things change within industry landscapes over time… algorithms are tweaked incrementally on a regular basis, machine learning grows and changes, and then you find that your untouched site has been slowly replaced in results with fresher, more authoritative results.
2. Keywords are Everything/Irrelevant!
Keywords cause confusion… are you supposed to use them? How much should you use? Is there a formula for how often and where on a page to put your most important terms? Will using keywords limit your range and scope in search results? Are keywords seen as deceptive because they target machines instead of people?
At one time, keywords were literally everything. You could game the system by including your keywords in certain places, a certain number of times, and sometimes even hidden in white text on a white background at the bottom of the page… all in an attempt to tell the algorithms “See, this page is super important concerning [insert term here].” And for a time, it did work. But this was never the intended use and was viewed as deceptive. Back then, Google started algorithmically penalizing or devaluing websites for deceptive practices and keyword stuffing.
Nowadays, some people aren’t sure whether keywords even matter. This is due to the fact that 15% of all Google searches have never been searched before and you can never optimize a page for every way a person might search for or want to find your content. Along with that, Google’s algorithms and machine learning have grown to better understand latent semantic indexing. The system better understands relationships between terms. Just because your page doesn’t mention or use a specific term, that doesn’t mean it won’t show up in search results for it if that is closely related. So why bother with specific keywords if the specifics don’t even matter anymore?
Keywords, search terms, core terms – however you prefer to refer to them – are still an important aspect of content. Having an idea of your important terminology as it evolves will allow you to better craft content and other on-page factors. Understanding how your core terms for one piece of content reflects on related and interlinked content can help bolster the relevance of your pages.
Don’t go so far as to think you need to include all variations of all related terms a certain number of times on page within every paragraph. Just keep in mind what you, your business, and your customers find important, use those terms naturally in the content, and progress from there.
3. Duplicate Content Will Penalize Your Site!
We’re not telling you to go crazy with duplicate content… but there is a difference between your site being penalized and a page being devalued.
Firstly, don’t steal other people’s content. While duplicate content may not penalize you, stealing content opens up legal issues, DMCA takedowns, and more. Obviously, you can still quote people in your content if you give them proper credit, link back to the original, and so on. And you can even still host someone else’s blog post on your site if you’re authorized to do so. But you may need to consider a canonical tag pointing to the original or even a notice with a link back to the original.
Sometimes duplication is unavoidable – especially for websites in the medical field. When it comes to specific medications, formulations, ingredient lists, legal warnings concerning side effects, and such; you might only have one way of expressing the content properly. Common content is an acceptable side effect of legal needs and requirements for certain industries. The last thing you’d want to do is rewrite important content like that because its “duplicate” and wind up causing harm or opening yourself up to a lawsuit.
Can duplicate content penalize your site? For the most part, what you’ll see is that your duplicate content will be de-indexed. If you need to have a piece of content duplicated on your site, you will want to consider a canonical tag pointing to the main version of that information. Perhaps the issue is caused by category and tag pages for your site’s blog… being flagged as duplicate content is a common side effect of those types of pages. But category and tag pages CAN be useful for user experience. In that case, you might want to NoIndex your categories and tags. The main portion of your blog and your posts will still be available and indexed, but the less useful page full of duplication will be removed from search results.
If your entire site is scraped from someone else’s website, then expect a penalty from Google. There is very little reason an entirely scraped website would be legitimate and not deceptive.
4. SEO will get you 1st Place Rankings Fast!
Have you ever seen those signs on the side of the road promising you “First Page Rankings” for your business? Or maybe that joke about how you should buy billboards with some important sounding fake word and optimize your website for it because no one else will show up and you’ll get all the traffic?
That’s not how Search Engine Optimization works. Everything has a process, despite how lightning fast the internet may seem at times. When on-page factors and content are updated on a site to better conform with best practices, include any necessary terms, have all the correct tags and meta data… they still need to be crawled and indexed. Then the algorithms parse the information, how its related to the rest of your site, how links to and from that content are relevant, and then evaluates that alongside other information available to determine what is most likely the best or most correct piece of content to return in individual searches.
SEO is an ongoing process. Work done on your site today will filter through and be regularly re-evaluated and sorted as the need arises. Just because you’re in 1st place today and 3rd place tomorrow, doesn’t mean something has gone wrong and the work needs to be scrapped or re-done. It is completely normal for fluctuations to appear in search results. Instead of worrying about rankings, we try to express to our clients the importance of “qualified traffic”. It might sound great that thousands of visits are happening… but if no one is interacting and converting then what was the point?
And don’t expect that because you show up 1st on your own personal searches that it means you are first place for everyone. Search results can be tailored (or personalized) depending on a variety of factors… so my search on a laptop five feet from your similar search on a mobile device can have a range of variations.
Also, please don’t buy a billboard for “tyaviguan” (or some other random batch of letters) so you can rank on the first page immediately. You still need to provide people with a service or product and tailor your content to better reach your audience. If your audience is looking for “medium blue widgets” then serve them a page with relevant information and explanations of the medium blue widgets that you offer. Ranking 1st for a search term no one is looking for won’t magically bring you qualified traffic and more sales.
5. AI Content Will Destroy SEO!
A big myth in 2023 concerns AI generated content. There are a lot of questions and misconceptions. Some people believe that AI generated content will be more pleasing to machine-assisted algorithms and eventually take over the search landscape. Other people believe that AI generated content will be picked up and penalized by Google because of recent changes that give preference to natural language content written for real individuals.
So far, the answer is that it is neither of those. AI content is not against Google Search guidelines. Whether the writer is human or not does not dictate whether the content gets penalized. Human-written content created to manipulate search rankings and AI content created to manipulate search rankings would both be against Google’s policies concerning spam. AI-assisted content created to serve a useful purpose, answer questions, and created with best practices in mind will be treated no differently than if a human being had typed it out. Poor quality content is poor quality no matter what tools were used in the creation of it.
If people are using AI to spin content and flood the search results, the search engines will alter their algorithms to combat that. In fact, that has happened in the past. People did use a variety of tools to spin content, change a few words here and there, and create an ocean of iterations of copy. Just because we’re using more advanced language processing tools doesn’t mean people can start using deceptive and spammy techniques from the past again.
Using AI to help you plan, research, and format your content is a good use of a tool in your arsenal. Just make sure to express to your readers/visitors that your content was AI-assisted… especially if a substantial portion was provided by AI tools. And please, if you are using AI to help with content creation – proofread, fact check, and review everything. Just because AI lays it out on a page doesn’t mean it is 100% accurate and correct information. Human review, editing, and rewrites will save you from providing people with inaccurate information.
Efferent Media – Providing SEO Services for More Than A Decade
Efferent Media has been providing SEO, lead generation, content creation, and digital marketing across the country since 2011. We don’t let myths and misinformation impact our work, instead we pride ourselves on collecting accurate information and making informed choices. If you’re looking to build up your new business or improve on an existing one, the team at Efferent Media has the years of knowledge and skill to turn your ideas into extraordinary digital experiences. For more information, book a meeting with our team and we’ll help you take that next step.