SEO Myths That You Should Avoid This Year

Image 

If you are in the midst of planning your marketing strategy this year, SEO is something that will be an important factor in your success and the creation of a healthy customer relationship. 

SEO is an important component of the marketing sector and it is crucial that you consider the best way to optimize all of your content for better visibility on search engines and therefore a higher chance of leads. There are of course many ways to approach this technical side of marketing, like outsourcing to a firm such as here: https://ignitedigital.com/toronto-seo-search-engine-optimization/, or taking a HubSpot masterclass to up your knowledge and skills. 

Today we are going to focus on some common SEO myths that fly around, and why you should avoid listening to these myths for the betterment of your business. 

1. After Hummingbird, keyword targeting became useless. 

This first myth thinks that after Hummingbird, keywords became obsolete but this is not the case. Keep targeting keywords all the livelong day!

2. XML boosts your search rankings

The Google XML sitemap generator is a handy tool to use for your website but this is in no way a necessity. Don’t think that if you don’t have XML you won’t be able to rank highly because this isn’t the case! 

3. Meta tags don’t matter

Meta tags absolutely DO matter. When adding meta tags to your content you are adding extra keywords and this helps to improve your rankings. So keep on adding.

4. Use meta robots tag to show indexable pages

The Robots.txt file is one that tells search engine crawlers which sections of the site to crawl and use, and which to ignore. However, you don’t need this file as you have the option to NOINDEX on WordPress. 

5. Top-level domains improve rankings

The top-level domain in your system is the highest position and the most recognizable. Usually .com or .co.uk are the top with ones such as .biz and .org taking a backseat. However, you don’t have to have a .com domain to rank well! Don’t worry about your domain and focus on making your website optimized. 

6. Target keywords in anchor text no longer matter

This is just a plain lie. When building links for SEO, it is important that you always add a keyword to your anchor text. 

7. Google automatically indexes new content 

Unfortunately, when you add new content to your website, Google won’t immediately index it as you may think. You can, however, use a tool such as Pingomatic to help notify web services whenever you add new content. 

8. You have to hire an agency to get good rankings

Although using the professionals is always a good way to ensure that you get a good SEO ranking, it is not the be-all and end-all. You can achieve the feat yourself by ensuring you add keywords and keyword phrases as well as tags to your content. Trust your own ability and use the tools on WordPress as well as Yoast to help you.