5 Persistent SEO Myths

1. Being an AdWords customer will improve your organic search rankings at Google.

You can file this under “conspiracy theories”. It’s very possible that you could see your organic search rankings improve following a successful AdWords campaign, but this could more easily be chalked up to the increased visibility, new traffic and potential for new links that the campaign afforded you.

2. Search Engines know how long a term you have purchased your domain for, and give better rankings to websites purchased for longer terms.

No. This myth must have been twisted around from this truth – search engines tend to favour sites that have been around for a while. Site age is definitely a factor that contributes to better rankings. A website that’s been online for many years gets a boost from that. Given two sites of otherwise equal quality, content and links, they often show a preference for the site that is older. The search engines are looking backward, not forward as far as domain purchases go. Site age has nothing to do with how many years you purchase or renew your domain for from the registrar. If you buy your domain for one year or lock in for ten, none of the search engines are monitoring your decision.

3. You need to update your website frequently to have good rankings.

You need to update your site regularly to have engaging, timely content and to give your visitors a reason to come back often. That’s it. Having “fresh” content is not a key component of good search engine rankings. There are plenty of websites with great rankings that haven’t been updated in years.

4. Every link counts.

Absolutely not. BackLinks from known Link Farms or Link Exchange programs don’t count, and can even work against you by bringing a penalty. Links from pages consisting of a large volume of unrelated links are often discounted and ignored. A link from a website with a lower PageRank and a lower link popularity rating than yours won’t hurt you, but it won’t help either. Meaning, it won’t count. Every link is not a great link.

5. If you have great content you will have great rankings.

This is the kind of the thing the search engines will tell you – if you build a great site the SEO will take care of itself. “Content is King!” Unfortunately, it’s not. You need great content to make your website worthwhile for your visitors, but this does not automatically roll over into great search engine rankings. “Great content” is subjective. We all know that popular doesn’t always mean good. You will need worthwhile content to entice people to link to your site, and a bunch of those links can definitely add up to improved rankings over time. But how will they find your great content in the first place? Sadly, it’s all a lot more complicated than just producing something interesting and unique.