Search engines have changed over the past year, and 2019 is no easy year to rank high. The stakes are high, and efforts are maximized to rank on the first page within your industry.
Google is picky nowadays. Search engines rank websites they know they can trust. They want to provide users with the most relevant information.
The more authority your website gains, the more it is trusted by Google. This takes plenty of time and lots of efforts. Are you continually optimizing your website and marketing activities to make sure you are staying relevant to both Google, and your users?
Here are three common SEO myths you need to forget about:
The more backlinks, the better
Yes, but no. This one is tricky. Many people focus only on the number of backlinks, but what you should focus on is the number of referring domains. If a website is continuously linking you with no real context, it could negatively affect your SEO. You know the saying “quality over quantity? ” this applies to backlinks. A thousand backlinks from a couple of low-quality websites is not better than one backlink from a quality, high-authority website.
So avoid trying to buy low-quality backlinks, or submitting your website’s link to ANY domain. Be picky.
User-experience is not as important
As I mentioned earlier, Google focuses on relevancy. A website that has a bad user-experience means a website that has a high bounce rate. Google knows how many visitors you had, how long people stayed on your website, how many people exited right out and more. Therefore your website’s user-experience is essential. If users find your website irrelevant, then Google will find your website irrelevant, and this will affect your ranking.
Social media doesn’t help SEO
Sure, social media doesn’t help SEO all that much if you’re thinking about short-term goals. However, social media helps immensely for the long-term. Much like SEO, social media takes time to generate results, and it’s an ongoing process. It gives you link opportunities, with a chance to build an audience and reputation.
Not only does it help directly with SEO, but it also gives you the advantage to engage with your potential users, and see what questions they have/what services or products they are looking for, to perfect your strategy.
There you have it!
If you’ve been under the impression that these are all true, it’s time to leave them all behind!
The tricky part about SEO and Google is that we don’t know exactly what their algorithm is. This is why digital marketing agencies value data so much. The ability to look at data and discover patterns helps us better understand how Google ranks your website.
