Organ­ic search is an extreme­ly valu­able mar­ket­ing chan­nel for brands and busi­ness­es to reach and influ­ence con­sumers through­out the pur­chase fun­nel and increase rev­enue. But it’s also mis­un­der­stood. Those who don’t ful­ly under­stand the prac­tice of search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) may find it con­fus­ing. Hav­ing the wrong infor­ma­tion can ulti­mate­ly harm your strate­gic plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion. It’s time to sep­a­rate fact from fic­tion and bust some of the biggest SEO myths.

Dis­claimer: these are gen­er­al rules of thumb about how these myths work and the real­i­ties that fol­low. As in all things SEO, there are excep­tions to every rule. How­ev­er, we’re just cov­er­ing the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples and appli­ca­tions that will cov­er most users.

Also the term SEO is used here to refer to all things relat­ed to organ­ic search mar­ket­ing. Since there is no com­mon agree­ment on what the indus­try is named today, this is the most inclu­sive descrip­tion.

Myths vs. Realities

MYTH: SEO Is Dead!

“I can stop wor­ry­ing about SEO.” This is one of the most overused pieces of click-bait in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing indus­try. Pub­lish an “Is SEO Dead?” piece and thou­sands of read­ers come run­ning, either to tell you NO! or to make sure it isn’t.

REALITY: The def­i­n­i­tion of what SEO means is always expand­ing. Whether you call it online mar­ket­ing, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, inbound mar­ket­ing, or web­site vis­i­bil­i­ty, all of these terms are address­ing some or all aspects of SEO. Why? Because as long as search engines and social media use algo­rithms and paid adver­tis­ing there will always be some facet of this type of mar­ket­ing. Long live SEO!

MYTH: SEO Is Voodoo, ‘Bovine Feces’ Or Magic

“We did SEO once.” SEO is not any of the above. It is based on a com­plex set of algo­rithms with over 200 main “sig­nals” and thou­sands of vari­a­tions with­in each of those sig­nals. This means that SEO is based on math and process­es. This means you can reverse engi­neer, test, and review how it works.

REALITY: SEO is a com­plex prac­tice that requires con­tin­u­al learn­ing. Google pro­vides paths to fol­low, but SEOs must fig­ure out how to nav­i­gate those paths. So your SEO team or provider like­ly spends a lot of time read­ing, review­ing, research­ing, and test­ing. How­ev­er, though refined, core SEO prin­ci­ples nev­er change and algo­rithms are machines. It’s only when you hire some­one who does­n’t under­stand these com­plex­i­ties when SEO will seem to be voodoo, “bovine feces,” or mag­ic.

MYTH: Black Hat SEO — Burning Bridges

“Isn’t black hat SEO Ille­gal?” No, black hat SEO isn’t ille­gal, it is just against Google’s rules. Now, going against Google’s rules might be bad for your website’s longevi­ty, but it is hard­ly ille­gal.

REALITY: Black hat SEO is sim­ply a set of tac­tics used to game the algo­rithms to get your more place­ments and posi­tion­ing. These tac­tics, how­ev­er, will like­ly get a site penal­ized if not done well and even then it is a risk. So the eth­i­cal issue is not if you use them, but if your SEO revealed that they were using these meth­ods. If so, then by all means go for it if you feel it is the best method. You should, how­ev­er, nev­er (real­ly nev­er) use it on a domain you can­not risk los­ing as that is a risk that is always on the table with this strat­e­gy.

MYTH: Google Hates Me

“Why can my com­peti­tors do that and I can’t?” Google does­n’t val­ue all web­sites the same, at the same time, or in the same way. Just because your com­peti­tor seems to have got­ten away with it, doesn’t mean they have done so. It also doesn’t mean Google has it out for you.

REALITY: What your com­peti­tors’ sites do has no bear­ing on your site. It also has no bear­ing on how you should plan your strate­gies, design your web­site, or launch your social media plan. While it is good to know what you are com­pet­ing against, more often than not what they do has lit­tle to do with what you need. Best to look at your own met­rics and devel­op a plan that will get you where you need to go. Not­ing yes, Google may not seem fair when your com­peti­tors are doing that thing you were told not to do. How­ev­er, you also won’t get that Google slap when the time comes – and it will like­ly come. So count your­self lucky!

MYTH: Don’t Use Google Tools

“Google tools hurt my site rank­ings!” The rumor goes that Google Ana­lyt­ics and Google Web­mas­ter Tools take the data they get and they use it against your site. Penal­ty? Must be your ana­lyt­ics.

REALITY: No. As of 2013, only 13 per­cent of sites used Google Web­mas­ter Tools. Using this data as a rank­ing fac­tor in the algo­rithms would result in a lot of false com­par­a­tive infor­ma­tion and poor deci­sions on Google’s part. What Google does, how­ev­er, is mea­sure met­rics such as time back to search and how long a user was on the site if they have Chrome Tool­bar installed. These can affect your site health, but the data col­lect­ed by Google tools isn’t used for these pur­pos­es.

MYTH: If You Build It, They Will Come

“Great con­tent is all you need.” This is sad­ly one of the most per­va­sive myths and just a “Field Of Dreams” that can make sure your brand fails to reach con­sumers.

REALITY: Great con­tent is a must. But just as a beau­ti­ful bridal gown cant actu­al­ly get you to your wed­ding, nei­ther can great con­tent get you to your goals – whether it’s cre­at­ing brand aware­ness, per­suad­ing peo­ple to buy, or being pur­chased. Unless you can pro­duce large amounts of con­tent and you’re in a viral market/industry, then you need links. Links as like the car that gets you to the wed­ding on time, or what dri­ves your tar­get audi­ence to your site.

MYTH: It’s a Popularity Contest

“Share it and they will come!” The idea here is all you need is to get a lot of social shares and the search engines will think your site deserves more posi­tion and traf­fic.

REALITY: This one is a mixed bag. While social shares can assist with the get­ting you brand vis­i­bil­i­ty, an active fol­low­ing and links once the post escapes the social ecosys­tem they don’t direct­ly assist your traf­fic and reach in the search engines. Though with Google get­ting the Twit­ter fire­hose again, that could change and is worth keep­ing an eye on.

MYTH: There’s No Place Like Home

“Who needs mobile?” Mobile traf­fic is the becom­ing one of the largest refer­ral sources. If you aren’t mobile ready, you’re miss­ing out on a large amount of traf­fic you might oth­er­wise be get­ting. How much depends on your niche and mar­ket, but either way, it isn’t a pit­tance.

REALITY: Google is giv­ing a big­ger boost to mobile-friend­ly pages, start­ing April 21. Pages that are mobile-unfriend­ly will lose vis­i­bil­i­ty in Google mobile search. What can you do to make sure your site will sur­vive?

Mobile SEO Now, a guide from Momen­tol­ogy and Linkdex, pro­vides every­thing brands and busi­ness­es need to know about the lat­est changes.

MYTH: Make A Fast Buck

“Fast SEO is good SEO.” There is an old say­ing; “You can­not get a baby in one month from nine preg­nant women.” Nei­ther can you get to your goals in SEO by going faster than the speed lim­it. Every­thing takes time and a good SEO plan will use that time for an advan­tage.

REALITY: SEO is not a mad dash race to the fin­ish. It is a slow climb with peaks and val­leys. Why? The most impor­tant word in all of search is the word “nat­ur­al.” Google looks for issues by seek­ing out unnat­ur­al pat­terns like accel­er­at­ed link growth with no cor­rel­a­tive event. Doing all your SEO quick­ly, espe­cial­ly links, isn’t like­ly to bring you the long-term results you hoped. Prop­er SEO helps not only in get­ting you posi­tioned, but also in get­ting the Google bot inter­est­ed in com­ing back often. So take your time and relax. Take the long way home.

MYTH: A Penny Saved Is A Dollar Earned

“SEO is more like, ‘pen­ny-wise, pound-fool­ish.’ ” SEO isn’t cheap. In an infor­mal poll, SEOs revealed they spend about two hours of each day keep­ing up with indus­try changes. This means pur­chas­ing SEO ser­vices isn’t about the ser­vices, but the knowl­edge behind them. You’re pay­ing for a knowl­edge base. The ser­vice is just the method.

REALITY: Get SEO cheap come-ons are typ­i­cal­ly how snake oil sales­man sell their ser­vices. Cheap is almost nev­er qual­i­ty and almost always uses SEO “tricks” in an attempt to game the sys­tem. How­ev­er, these tech­niques are more like­ly to get your domain burned out of the index than they are to bring you sus­tained traf­fic and con­ver­sions. Can you get inex­pen­sive ser­vices? Sure that is based on busi­ness pric­ing mod­els, but 1,000 links for $99 is only going to bring you pain and suf­fer­ing in the long run. There are some rare use cas­es for this approach, but nev­er on your cash reg­is­ter.

MYTH: Too Big to Fail

“Do you know who I am?” Some sites, espe­cial­ly big brands, think they are too impor­tant to the search results to get a hard Google slap.

REALITY: While big brands weath­er their pun­ish­ments by the mighty hand of Google and Bing bet­ter than small busi­ness­es, your site can still suf­fer huge loss­es in vis­i­bil­i­ty and traf­fic if hit hard enough. In fact, Google has even slapped its own sites for vio­la­tions of the “rules.” No site is too big to fail. There are no spe­cial snowflakes. Big­ger ones take more time to melt, but if your rank­ings van­ish how many peo­ple will you have to fire while wait­ing to get your traf­fic back?

MYTH: I’m a Special Snowflake!

“Every­one knows our brand. We don’t need SEO.” The idea that your site is so well known you don’t need SEO is one of the more dan­ger­ous myths.

REALITY: Big brands usu­al­ly get large amounts of traf­fic. This does not mean you are per­form­ing well. For exam­ple, Wal­mart may think it does­n’t need to wor­ry about SEO until its elec­tron­ics stop com­ing up in search and it’s los­ing sales to those who do con­sid­er SEO a busi­ness pri­or­i­ty. We once had to tell a site that their 30 mil­lion vis­i­tors a month did­n’t make them a big brand in their ver­ti­cal, but a small one. SEO is the foun­da­tion on which your site becomes wide­ly and rel­e­vant­ly vis­i­ble. All sites ben­e­fit from a prop­er foun­da­tion and strate­gic dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing plan.

MYTH: Money Can Buy You Love


“I buy paid search ads from Google AdWords so I’ll rank bet­ter!” This may be the biggest con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, one that’s pop­u­lar in forums and late night bar chats. But it has no mer­it.

REALITY: There is a long held myth that if you buy paid ads in Google that it will help you rank bet­ter in Google. This sim­ply isn’t true. The two divi­sions are com­plete­ly siloed at Google. They do not relate. There are even FTC laws that pre­vent it. 

Now there is a well-known syn­er­gis­tic affect from buy­ing your brand terms and rank­ing in the top of those results at the same time. The idea is, sub­con­scious­ly peo­ple infer sta­tus and brand author­i­ty when this hap­pens, so you might see an increase in traf­fic which can help increase organ­ic place­ment and over­all results, but this is not from buy­ing the ads them­selves.

MYTH: Who Needs Links Anyway?

“Why does my site need links, if I have an awe­some site and great con­tent?” Some peo­ple think Google will reward your for pub­lish­ing awe­some con­tent. Well… no.

REALITY: Organ­ic search vis­i­tors won’t come because no one will know you exist. With­out links, no one will see your site. Why? Google still active­ly fac­tors links heav­i­ly in your site val­ue. Which means if they don’t see oth­er sites link­ing to you, they don’t give you a board view in Google. Not acquir­ing links to your web­site means you also won’t have traf­fic, vis­i­tors, or rev­enue. When you build links, bring in the experts who know how to get good links that won’t do any dam­age to your site. For more on links, see Link Build­ing Now: 5 Key Points You Need To Know.

MYTH: Fresher Than a Daisy

“Fresh­ness is close to Goog­ley­ness” This myth revolves around the idea that web­sites have to change their site every day to make sure they have fresh con­tent or Google will get bored and stop crawl­ing the site. It might even get deval­ued.

REALITY: Whether or not you need fresh con­tent (daily/weekly/monthly or ever) is tied to the site type. While news sites need fresh con­tent every day and a lot of it, your site on how to make pret­ty cakes might not. Why? Your site type tells Google whether they should expect new con­tent and how often. A news site needs to add new con­tent every day will be expect­ed to, where as a site on an “ever­green” top­ic might not. It also depends on how big the site is and its indus­try. A small mom and pop store in a non-com­pet­i­tive mar­ket can get away with a few blog posts a month, where­as a large pub­lish­er can­not.

MYTH: A Tall Tale

“Shar­ing is car­ing.” The idea here is that links to sites oth­er than my own are bad. All inter­nal links point inward and for the ones that point out­ward the belief is you nofol­low them to keep your site link juice from leak­ing out.

REALITY: Links to oth­er sites are good. Google likes to see you being an active part of the Inter­net com­mu­ni­ty. Shar­ing links helps them find oth­er sites as they crawl yours. Keep­ing all your links inside your site or by adding no fol­lows traps their bot and gives them no link infor­ma­tion. 

Now, you must always put a nofol­low direc­tive on all ads and it is good to be care­ful about to whom you give your link juice, but do share. As in all things how­ev­er, mod­er­a­tion is key. Don’t over­share, just a few links here and there and even bet­ter yet, to sites that don’t com­pete with you.

MYTH: GTLDs = Big Win

”
Give me the new GTLDs!” This myth is says that by buy­ing the new GTLDs you will help your rank­ings. For exam­ple, if I am a Las Vegas Hotel and buy “.Vegas” I will blast past all my com­peti­tors.

REALITY: No. Buy­ing a GTLD will not help your site, in search in most cas­es, in fact it might even hurt it as “.coms” are still the best rank­ing domains. Now there are ones like “.sucks” you might want to buy to pro­tect your com­pa­ny name and if you are a hotel in Las Vegas that new domain might be eas­i­er for your clients to remem­ber. How­ev­er, in most cas­es, you would do bet­ter to redi­rect it to your “.com” and only use it in adver­tis­ing.

MYTH: We’re Number One!


“Rank­ing num­ber one is all that mat­ters.” Because it feels good when we see our site at the top of the engines, we can be led to think this is all that mat­ters. In fact, you typ­i­cal­ly have no idea where you are in the engine because of fac­tors like per­son­al­iza­tion and geolo­ca­tion.

REALITY: Being num­ber one is not what it was 10, or even three years ago. With per­son­al­ized search mov­ing our clicked on links up the page and oth­er fac­tors such as geolo­ca­tion chang­ing what we see, being “num­ber one” is rel­a­tive. Now add to that what are you num­ber one for? Sure if you sell baby bug­gy bumpers you will be thrilled to see your site num­ber one for lit­tle red baby bug­gy bumpers, is that as valu­able as baby bug­gies or baby bumpers? Your ana­lyt­ics and con­ver­sion track­ing will give you a much bet­ter pic­ture of how your site is doing for your busi­ness than posi­tion­ing.

MYTH: That’s a Wrap

“OK, I’m done.” Some peo­ple believe that once you’ve done SEO, you’re done with SEO. Except…

REALITY: SEO isn’t some­thing you add lat­er, pause, or stop unless you want to stop grow­ing or even more like­ly, lose the gains you have made. SEO today is what your radio, TV, Yel­low Pages and sig­nage did 15 years ago. It is a big part of your mar­ket­ing plan. Don’t neglect it. In the end what you save will be far less than what you would have made, had you stayed the course. Organ­ic search is still one of the best meth­ods to reach you cus­tomers and they are typ­i­cal­ly more engaged than oth­er traf­fic refer­ral types.

MYTH: SEO Is All You Need


“My SEO is good, why am I not mak­ing mon­ey?” SEO is a big part of the online mar­ket­ing pic­ture. How­ev­er, it isn’t the only part.

REALITY: Your traf­fic is up. Your site is bring­ing in more traf­fic than it ever has, but you are not feel­ing it in the wal­let. What’s wrong? This is a com­plex bag of poten­tial issues. The first places to look how­ev­er are pret­ty sim­ple. First, how well is your site in con­vert­ing that traf­fic? Have you reviewed the con­ver­sion process and looked for issues? Have you done a usabil­i­ty review? If your site is not deliv­er­ing what it promis­es to the user, they will come and go like there was a revolv­ing door. What else? Busi­ness process­es and book­ing engine issues are two of the most com­mon prob­lems com­pa­nies face when their site isn’t con­vert­ing vis­i­tors. From your cus­tomer ser­vice, to how your error mes­sag­ing works, to the length of your forms, to but­ton col­ors; all of these can affect how much mon­ey your site makes. Make sure you have reviewed your inter­nal issues as well as your site’s when look­ing to the mon­ey issue.

MYTH: Google, I said NO!

“The Robots.txt and the NoIn­dex tag are inter­change­able.” Or “Why are my pages show­ing in the Google index, I told Google not to go there?” The noin­dex and robots.txt do very dif­fer­ent things and which one you choos­es mat­ters.

REALITY: We all have seen those sites in the search engines that has the mes­sage the descrip­tion is unavail­able. Now you have that issues, but you are con­fused because you used the robots.txt dis­al­low direc­tive to remove that page from Google. Why doesn’t Google lis­ten? Actu­al­ly, the robots.text only dis­al­lows the crawl­ing of your page, but not the index­ing of the page URL or link. How­ev­er, using the robots.txt means Google can’t get to the noin­dex tag that you put on that page as well. If you want a page to be removed from the search engines, remove the robots.txt direc­tive and let Google get to that noin­dex tag.

MYTH: Schema Is Just A Buzzword

“I don’t need schema, that’s just padding someone’s hours.” Schema is a tag­ging of your con­tent on the code side that helps the search engines find things on your site that oth­er­wise might be lost to them.

REALITY: While we can eas­i­ly see con­tent like address and phone num­ber on the front-end of a site, some­times this is buried in a mound of code and script­ing that makes it hard for the search engines to dis­cern is this your office num­ber or just a ref­er­ence. Schema allows the search engines to bet­ter under­stand your site and there­fore bet­ter index your con­tent. The down­side is this data can also be used to divert traf­fic from your site in a piece of the search engine results page known as the Knowl­edge Graph. So def­i­nite­ly use schema, just be care­ful where and when.