Fallacies of SEO

Webmasters are constantly looking for ways to get a leg up on competitors and rank above them in the SERP. Along the way, some have wrongly assumed that certain strategies help them rank higher when actually they cause nothing to happen or even worse, cause a rank drop. A few of these fallacies are: using your keyword often makes your rank go up, links are important no matter who they are from, and putting a certain number of words in the description. First off is the idea that excessive keyword usage is helpful to your rank. While some keyword usage is good and should be practiced, many people think that you need to put your keywords everywhere in the page even if it doesn’t quite fit. They think that by doing so Google will recognize that and think that their site has really rich and relevant content for users causing them to rank higher. This is not the case as Google recognizes how often your keyword appears and actually views that negatively. The common best practice is to have your keyword occur only 1-2% of the total content. While this seems small, it really is a good portion of your content and allows Google to recognize the word and properly rank your site accordingly. Next is the idea that links trump everything. Inbound links are good for building the authority of your site but you want to be careful who you allow to link to you. If you are a site selling plants, it is irrelevant for a sporting goods store to link to you. That link will be cast aside by Google because it recognizes that the sporting goods store has nothing to do with your plant business. On the other hand if a seed shop linked to you, that would be recognized as a quality link and would factor into your page rank on the SERP. Lastly is the thought that Google wants a specific number of words in the description. In reality, Google doesn’t even look at your description to determine ranking. What it does is makes sure that your description matches what Google thinks your page is about and then amends the description based on differences it sees. The description is solely there to help the searcher and has nothing to do with Google rank. These are only a few of the fallacies that people have but they are some of the bigger ones and are super important to be aware of when performing SEO.