There are a lot of myths in the world of SEO and bloggers can be seen to post contradicting articles that are counter-productive to actually beneficial SEO work. You’ll probably find yourself unsure of what to believe, so we wanted to iron out a few of the “tips” we have seen that are not true at all. In fact, doing the opposite of most of them will help you achieve higher rankings than you are currently seeing for your website and chosen keywords.
“Keywords are not necessary”
Google’s updates will never eliminate the importance of keywords in your website’s ranking efforts. You should, however, avoid over-optimising your website with keywords – including exact match keyword anchors and exact match domain updates.
“Meta tags don’t matter”
Meta tags may not help you boost your rankings, but they do help to tell users and search engine’s what your website is about. Good meta tags make your website look more attractive and therefore attract more clicks from users.
“XML Sitemaps help boost your rankings”
Hint: they don’t. XML Sitemaps are used by Google and other search engines to crawl your website and any new pages faster. They don’t actually affect the rankings of your website at all.
“Having keywords in your backlink anchor text doesn’t matter”
It is true that excessive use of keyword-rich anchor text will negatively affect your search rankings, but to say that they are not relevant at all is simply untrue. Using them the right amount can give you a great rankings boost.
“Guest posting is dead”
No, guest posting is not dead. When it comes to actual guest posting, it’s neither the writer or the content that’s the problem. It’s the context: the type of article, its uniqueness, the anchor texts, and the links pointing to and from your website.
“Social signals aren’t a ranking factor”
Social metrics play a vital role in bringing together all of your website’s ranking factors and help to make them work together to boost your rankings. Google and the other search engines use a lot of data from social media sites to determine how useful your website is.
