Search Engine Optimization is an ever-evolving discipline and it can be extremely vague at junctures. It easily causes a lot of debate and it’s very hard to really know for sure what is fact and what is fiction when someone is talking about SEO. Our digital marketing experts have put together the top 10 myths that have been making their rounds in 2017.

Myth 1: Your Search Engine experience is the same no matter the computer you use

Google doesn’t function that way anymore. It has grown and become a lot more complex by generating suggestions based on what it already knows about you. With that in mind, the people searching for your website may type in the same things but see different results. A simple example is if you’re searching for a good pizza place, not for the first time, links you’ve clicked in the past are likely to show up as more relevant to you, pushing newer links lower. Geography is another obvious characteristic different when searching on Google. Using the example above, you could just search for a pizza place without specifying the location and if you’re sitting in Dubai, you’ll obviously see Dubai-specific search results.

Myth 2: Keyword Tags, Meta Titles, and Meta Descriptions do not matter anymore

All meta information on a website is extremely important. It’s the basis of SEO. Landing pages or websites that don’t have tagged keywords, meta titles, and meta descriptions will definitely rank lower than their competitors over the long term.

Myth 3: You can hide stuff from Google inside images

You’re not smarter than Google. You can’t outsmart them and you cannot hide stuff in images thinking their crawlers won’t catch it. “Smart” SEO folks try and hide things such as “Click my affiliate adverts” or “Link to my page” because they know they get penalized by Google if they write it as text.

Google has become extremely advance in image tech and can very easily identify elements in an image to categorize what kind of image it is. Reading text on an image is child’s play.

Myth 4: You can reach the number one spot for a certain keyword

The rules of SEO are changing dramatically. Type in any keyword into Google right now and a whole range of websites will appear. Unless you are typing in the name of something specific, such as McDonald’s, you can’t really be sure what’s going to appear at the top of Google’s search results.

This alludes to the fact that search results have become completely tailor-made as well as overall ranking is constantly shifting for websites.

Myth 5: Link building is dead

I hear this a lot from cocky SEO agencies. Not only is link building alive and well, but it’s also crucial for your SEO strategy. Link building is all about drawing quality traffic and attention to your website. This traffic is what makes Google’s crawlers take notice and bump your site up in its ranks.

Google even has a way of figuring out if you own a bunch of the websites that you are linking to your website, so you can’t just buy 60 websites and link to yourself.

Myth 6: People with smaller budgets can fare just as well with larger companies

There’s no more place for the small guy in Google’s top search results, though it used to be the case once upon a time. Like advertising, the more money you throw at SEO, in terms of content creation and strong backend teams, the higher your website will rank.

Myth 7: Different pages should have different keywords

Yoast is a WordPress SEO plugin used and referred to heavily by bloggers and online publications as the one, true SEO guide for their website’s content. When you add a focus keyword you’ve used before, Yoast will prompt you by saying you’ve used this keyword before and you should change it. It gives writers the thinking that their content should have a variety of keywords posted across the website. Google couldn’t care less.

They are not judging your web pages on your focus keyword. Your focus keyword is only a small consideration when ranking your website. For example, if your website is all about digital marketing in Dubai, then it stands to reason that your focus keyword is going to be “digital marketing” for more than one of your pages.

Myth 8: You MUST find an SEO agency that can guarantee you a number one ranking

An SEO company cannot guarantee your website will hit Google’s number 1 search result any more than they can guarantee there will be no traffic on the roads in the morning. Even Google employees can’t thanks to the intricately complex algorithm that runs Google’s search engine.

A good SEO company should be promising you great content creation, curation, transparency on their activities along with accurate ranking stats of each keyword. Most importantly, their promise to you should be to ensure your website is constantly following Google’s recommended SEO rules and keeps your website popular in its search results. i.e. 1st page and as high up as possible.

Myth 9: The Best links are from .edu and .gov sites

The domain ending has nothing to do with how well your website will rank. Some people think that these websites count as authority websites, but they are treated like most other websites. These websites may appear on the top because they are dense with content, constantly updated, and can get massive traffic. But it still follows the general rules for SEO.

Myth 10: Linking out helps you rank

Another popular myth you get to hear. Don’t fall for it! A lot of publishers and bloggers heavily focus on adding links that take users to other websites believing it helps in ranking. It has no bearing on ranking, however.

It’s hard to parse right from wrong. Find yourself a digital marketing agency in Dubai who have tons of experience helping brands reach their objectives and goals.

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