“SEO is just rubbish. It doesn’t work. I have tried it a couple of times and it doesn’t work. It’s just a big industry trying to scam people”. Well, I have heard this from several different people. Some have a reason as to why they have come to this conclusion; the rest are just well-meaning people with the wrong knowledge about SEO. In each of these cases, I have responded by passionately batting for SEO. I openly like to announce to the world that I love SEO. And there is a big reason for that. SEO has single-handedly, well almost, been responsible for doubling our sales volume. We invested in an SEO strategy, created loads of the right content, spent our time in marketing that content and well we tasted success. And that’s the only thing you need to remember about SEO – you need to do SEO the right way. There are scores of companies mushrooming every day in every corner of the world promising you SEO services. Make sure you know what is right and wrong about Search Engine Optimisation so that you can have big wins. So that’s what I am going to do in this blog post – shout out the most common myths or misconceptions about search engine optimization. Here we go- Myth #1: SEO just does not work Well, this one really gets my goat. But, unfortunately, I know a lot of business owners across the world being sold really bad SEO deals with promises that really don’t work. If you are paying someone anything lesser than $125, your SEO goals are most likely not going to be met. This is because your service provider will not invest in high-quality content writing services that are really needed to make a difference. Because he will be cutting the corners on content, he will not be able to deliver the results you are looking for. SEO is working the world over but only if you are going to do it right. And that is impossible without a proper strategy that is backed by lots of good content. If you don’t have a blog, get one integrated to your website. Your service provider should have advised you to get your blog up and ready with good content. For genuine traffic to flow in, you need at least two blogs per week or at least four blogs a month (remember long-form content) to be published and shared. Ask your service provider to share with you the kind of content that his team is producing and sharing on third party sites. If this is crappy content stuffed with keywords that don’t really make sense then chances are your SEO won’t really work. Myth #2: SEO is a one-time thing I did SEO once, so why should I do it again. This is like saying – I invested in updating my blog once and why should I regularly update it. SEO is a continuous process because of these reasons – Your competitors are continuously at it – There are hundreds of thousands of websites who vie for that ranking on the first page of Google. And that is true for any industry. So if you want to retain that first-page ranking, make sure your SEO is not a one-time activity. Search Engines are continuously changing Algorithms – Google’s Pigeon, Panda, Hummingbird Bird, Penguin updates have changed the way search was done. According to Matt Cutts, the former head of Google Spam Team, 90% of all searches were affected by Hummingbird. Hence, its important to stay abreast of these algorithm changes and work towards newer strategies that help you understand what your users are looking for. Regular updates help maintain page rankings – Your page rankings depend on how regularly you conduct your SEO activities. An interesting study, though very small, highlighted by SEO Roundtable, shows that clients who stopped their SEO campaigns experienced a 30% drop in ranking. Consistency is the word for SEO. You have to regularly optimize pages and images, submit new content, build links, drive traffic, and enhance your website’s structure. So if you lose momentum, your SERPs will be affected. Your top rankings are never guaranteed. The competitors you have beaten will fight back even harder to reclaim their spot. Myth #3: Link building is dead. Its only content that matters I wish that was the case. But no matter what anyone says, link building is very much alive and kicking. It still happens to be one of the most authoritative factors that determine the ranking of a page for a particular keyword. The age old way of building links, of course, is dead. Submitting to scores of directories or building empty links without context doesn’t work anymore. What works now is getting quality back links (preferably with the keyword you need) from a mix of high and average authority websites. In that sense, link building has become less tedious but a tad more difficult. You now need to ‘invest’ strategy and time into link building and cannot copy-paste from others. Research the domain authority of the websites you want links from, serenade them with high-quality content and approach them to build links. Along with on-page SEO, link building is something that you’ll have to do every week. You can start with extensive research on your top Google competitors, spy on their back links using the MOZ site explorer or the Cognitive SEO tool. Curating this list and setting up a process for ongoing link building practices every week can give your SEO the push it needs. Remember that external link building will also need a lot of authoritative, good quality content. Your guest posts need to add value to the host site and the user. Your blog comments should make sense and not be spammy. Start by dedicating just two hours a week to make this work – two dedicated hours where you do nothing but work
