When it comes to search engine optimisation, there are hundreds of myths out there that simply aren’t true.
If you’ve been tearing your hair out trying to implement every SEO strategy under the sun, it’s likely that you’ve been tiring yourself out trying to carry out tactics and techniques that simply aren’t going to move the needle for your website. Lucky for you, we’ve gathered the top 10 SEO myths that many marketers, content specialists and ecommerce managers don’t realise are just wasting previous time and resources that could be spent in much more worthwhile ways. So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to find out exactly what to do to boost site visitors and ultimately, sales this year! Let’s get stuck in.
Myth 1: SEO is a one-time task
The first myth we’re here to bust is that SEO is a one-time task. This is categorically untrue and falling for this myth could significantly harm your website’s performance as you pull back from implementing essential optimisation techniques. SEO is a long-term practice that helps you to build a sustainable ecommerce website with consistent organic traffic that doesn’t depend solely on paid advertising. Successful SEO strategies hinge on consistent optimisations, regular content updates and continuous monitoring.
Myth 2: All backlinks are good
Since the dawn of the internet there seems to have been a myth that all backlinks are good for SEO. So much so that there are thousands of people out there trying to sell you toxic backlinks to boost your rankings. Unfortunately, this is a false narrative and should be avoided at all costs, paying for backlinks can significantly harm your website’s authority and reduce your visibility within the SERPs. Search engines like Google and Bing are actively penalising websites that use this kind of Black Hat SEO tactic which aims to fool the algorithm, but really it just damages your brand’s reputation and pushes web pages down the results pages. If you’re unsure about the quality of your current backlink profile, Crawly’s free backlink checker is a good starting point for identifying any toxic or low-quality links pointing at your site.
Myth 3: Longer content always ranks better
This myth is more nuanced than the ones above as there is some truth to this, but you’ve got to be careful. While it is a myth that longer content *always* ranks better than its shorter competition, oftentimes longer content is full of original, highly-valuable, educational and informative content that is tailored to its target audience and as a result of all of those things, it is likely to rank higher within the SERPS. However, it is not solely as a result of the length of content. It’s actually as a result of its immense value which perhaps includes first-hand research, expert commentary, statistics, original graphics and other key indicators that the content is of true value to site visitors. While longer content doesn’t *always* rank more highly, it is more likely that longer content hits the points that Google’s EEAT algorithm is looking for and in turn, will rank higher.
Myth 4: The higher the keyword density, the higher you’ll rank
Keyword density describes how many times a particular keyword is used in a webpage, article or other piece of content. For example, in a blog post of 1000 words, a keyword may be used 10 times, giving a keyword density of 1% for that post. The common misconception here is that the higher the keyword density, the higher a piece of content will rank. Unfortunately, this isn’t true anymore.
Back at the beginning of SEO, this practice (colloquially dubbed ‘keyword stuffing’) would have pushed your content up the rankings but nowadays, search engines are attuned to this kind of tactic and Google actually penalises websites that practice keyword stuffing. So next time you’re writing an article and desperately want to rank highly for it, don’t crowbar in tons of keywords that don’t make sense within the context of your sentence or else your website may take a hit!
Myth 5: More Pages = Better Rankings
Wouldn’t that be nice? Of course, it’d be absolutely fantastic if the more pages you added to your website, the higher you ranked within the SERPs but unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work like that. The reality of the matter is that the relevance, quality and originality of your web page content matters much more than the sheer quantity of web pages you publish. More pages do not automatically equate to higher rankings. Instead, we’d suggest focusing on optimising your existing web pages with a robust internal linking strategy and updating pages with original and informative content that includes your target keywords. SEO is all about quality over quantity so focus on the value each page is providing rather than adding as many pages as you possibly can.
Myth 6: Technical SEO is only for large websites
Technical SEO is an essential practice for any website, regardless of the size, industry or scale of the website. Implementing technical optimisations such as implementing efficient redirects, canonical tags and robots.txt files and resolving any technical issues that arise rapidly, is essential for any website looking to build organic visibility and rank highly within the SERPs.
Myth 7: Web page design doesn’t impact SEO
This is a common myth in the world of ecommerce as many people aren’t aware of the correlation between website design and SEO. While it’s not necessarily the visual and brand identity elements of a website like colour palettes and logos that impact SEO, the website layout, structure, organisation of content and navigation all play an integral part in SEO. As search engine crawlers literally crawl through your website to get an understanding of what your website is about and who would be interested in it, ensuring that content is structured in a way that is seamless and easy for crawlers to identify and categorise is essential to successful optimisation.
Not only that, web performance is also a major ranking factor for search engines, with Google specifically outlining that Core Web Vitals are a key component in their ranking algorithm. Overall, web design and performance should never be overlooked when it comes to ecommerce SEO.
Myth 8: Exact match domains guarantee better rankings
Exact match domains simply refer to websites that include the keyword they want to rank for, within their domain. For instance, if a customer was searching for sustainable water bottles, an exact match domain would be www.sustainablewaterbottles.co.uk for example. This is a largely outdated tactic that really doesn’t have a significant impact on SEO rankings at all so doesn’t need to be taken into consideration. On the flip side, if you’re using an exact match domain but don’t have valuable, original content on the page, this can actually harm rankings. In sum, we wouldn’t recommend worrying about exact match domains and instead, would suggest focusing on tried and tested SEO methods.
Myth 9: PageSpeed isn’t important
In recent years, Google have highlighted time and time again that a huge ranking factor is their Core Web Vital metrics. If you’re not familiar with these metrics, we’ve listed Google’s descriptions of the metrics below. As you can see, LCP and INP are intrinsically linked to PageSpeed, loading speed and your website’s overall performance. Highlighting that PageSpeed is a key aspect that Google is analysing and assessing when ranking your website. ‘PageSpeed isn’t important’ is a huge myth that should be taken with a pinch of salt!
- “Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures loading performance. To provide a good user experience, strive to have LCP occur within the first 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load”
- “Interaction To Next Paint (INP): Measures responsiveness. To provide a good user experience, strive to have an INP of less than 200 milliseconds”
- “Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability. To provide a good user experience, strive to have a CLS score of less than 0.1″
Myth 10: SEO is irrelevant for niche B2B companies
SEO is absolutely relevant for businesses across any industry, whether you’re a B2B ecommerce brand or something even more niche. If an agency has ever said that SEO is irrelevant for your niche business, then steer clear as any SEO agency worth their weight will be able to work wonders with your niche business: Just think of the unique keywords and content gaps they could find and help you rank for! No matter how niche your audience is, you can utilise SEO to attract your target customers and increase qualified leads coming through your website. Considering that over 80% of B2B businesses believe SEO generates higher-quality leads that paid ads, it’s clear that SEO is absolutely relevant, if not an essential part of building a successful B2b ecommerce brand.
And there we have it. We hope we’ve busted most of the SEO myths you’ve come across but if you need a helping hand implementing technical fixes or building an SEO strategy from scratch, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our SEO experts!
