SEO is a fast-changing industry. Methods that were considered best practice just 5 years ago could land you in hot water today. As soon as SEO professionals find a way to manipulate the search engines, the search giants respond by further tinkering with their algorithms. SEO is like a race with no finish line, you just need to make sure you’re staying ahead of the competition. With this in mind, we’ve put together this list of common SEO myths that we all need to stop believing in 2018.
Content is more important than SEO
While it’s true that search engines place a great deal of value on high-quality content, this alone isn’t sufficient to help your website up the rankings. You should continue publishing fresh and valuable content, but this should be done as part of a wider SEO strategy, not instead of an SEO strategy.
Meta descriptions are a ranking factor
The meta description is the little snippet of content that appears below your page title in the search engine results page. A few years ago, SEOs were busy stuffing this description with keywords as it was considered to be a ranking factor. While this might not be the case today, it doesn’t mean you should ignore your meta descriptions. Instead of writing for the search engines, write for people and provide enticing and engaging meta descriptions to help boost your click-through rate.
Creating more pages will help my site rank better
In an effort to rank for more and more exact match keywords, a common SEO tactic is to create more and more pages for each keyword variant. While adding new content to your site is valuable for SEO, this should really be done through your blog rather than creating new pages. Focus on improving the quality of the pages you already have on the site rather than adding new pages.
The #1 spot is the only one that matters
While it’s true that over 90% of search engine users won’t venture past the first page, there is value in appearing in other places besides the #1 spot. There are so many new search features available, such as the rich snippets box, map results and even the answer box. People will typically click on the first result they see, or scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the final result. Appearing anywhere on the first page has SEO value, so you don’t need to obsess about the #1 spot.
Common SEO myths – where to find out more
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