BIGCOMMERCE The Top 10 SEO Myths App User Guide

BIGCOMMERCE The Top 10 SEO Myths App

Product Information

SEO Myths is a comprehensive guide that debunks common misconceptions and provides accurate information about search engine optimization (SEO) practices. It aims to help users understand the true nature of SEO and avoid falling into traps that can harm their website’s visibility and ranking on search engines.

The guide covers a wide range of topics related to SEO, including the reasons behind the existence of numerous myths, the impact of the hustler economy on SEO misinformation, the evolution of SEO practices, and the debunking of popular myths. It also  provides insights into Google’s ranking signals and the importance of words, code, and link building in SEO.

The information in SEO Myths is based on extensive research,  including patent filings, statements from Google, and scientificevidence. While it acknowledges that there are hundreds of ranking   factors and myths, it focuses on debunking the most common and easily-disproven ones.

Product Usage Instructions

1. Start by familiarizing yourself with the contents of SEO Myths.
2. Understand the reasons behind the existence of SEO myths and their impact on businesses.
3. Learn about Google’s ranking signals and how they have evolved over time.
4. Gain insights into the importance of words, code, and link building in SEO.
5. Read about the debunking of 10 common and easily-disproven SEO myths.
6. Avoid practices such as keyword stuffing, which is considered a bad idea in SEO.
7. Implement the recommended SEO strategies and best practices mentioned in the guide.
8. Regularly update your knowledge about SEO by referring to reliable sources like patent filings, statements from Google, and scientific research.
9. Monitor your website’s performance and make necessary adjustments based on the insights provided in SEO Myths.
10. Consider seeking professional assistance or consulting with SEO experts for advanced optimization techniques.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an art where anybody can dabble in the basics. Itʼs difficult (yet, profitable) to master every nuance of SEO and search engine algorithms. This is why most of the webʼs information about SEO is flawed.

Why So Many Myths?

Googleʼs made the claim that 10,000 signals influence their search results.

For starters, thatʼs a really difficult thing for anybody to genuinely know. How many lists of 10,000 can you recite from memory?

Itʼs not just that SEO is difficult. Thereʼs a big machine that churns out SEO misinformation as if it were somebodyʼs job. And for some, it kind of is. Hereʼs why there are so many SEO myths.

The Hustler Economy

Itʼs unfortunate, but itʼs profitable to propagate SEO myths. You may have seen stories about the FTC shutting down robodial scams from businesses literally claiming to be Google. It doesnʼt end there. In the age of The Four Hour Work Week, everybody wants everything faster. The market demands it, so businesses sell this alternate reality as an assortment of SEO products. In 2019, more business owners lack an understanding of SEO than possess it. It may not always be this way. But for now, many of the largest SEO ventures remain purposeful misinformation machines.

The Telephone Game
In 2015, MarkingProfs estimated that 2 million blog posts were written daily.
One of the loudest sources of search engine optimization information comes from a few of Googleʼs own content creators. Their advice can be helpful. But often, itʼs vague and ambiguous. The copywriters that report on this are rarely professional SEOs.

They misinterpret this information. Other bloggers read and misinterpret that. Sensationalism tends to trump practicality and the advice that reaches the mainstream is rarely useful.

The Evolution
SEO has changed. Googleʼs been clear about where theyʼre headed: they want to reward sites that are naturally the most relevant and popular solution to very specific problems. Their ranking signals are actually mostly the same.

Itʼs about words, code, and link building. But theyʼve gotten better at managing them.

As such, SEO advice becomes outdated.

For example, there was a time when a link to your store could only either help or be worth nothing. After all, you donʼt control who links to you. Googleʼs 2013 Penguin update changed that and introduced external link penalties, alongside a manual tool to discredit them.

Debunking The SEO Myths

We know about hundreds of ranking factors. Theyʼre influenced in thousands of ways. In the same vein, there are hundreds of SEO myths.

Iʼve fact-checked hundreds of the most popular myths using primarily patent filings, statements from Google, and the scientific method as evidence.

• None of the above are individually perfect. But these tend to be our best sources.
• What youʼll find below are high-level myths that are often perpetrated by agencies, brands burned by bad SEO strategy, and the like.
• We wonʼt go deep on meta descriptions, or which search engines to optimize for (Google!), overall digital marketing strategy, bounce rate or click-through rates, or the very bad idea of keyword stu?ing.
• Instead, here are 10 of the most common and easily-disproven SEO myths.

Keyword density greatly improves page ranking.
On one hand, keywords matter.

Using them thoroughly and frequently matters. But chasing an exact percentage of keywords in a pageʼs text doesnʼt.
In extreme cases, itʼs harmful.
Two reasons.

• First, Google actually told us that they use something called TF-IDF instead. It stands for Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency. Google talks about this in patent US 7996379 B1 and more elaborately in a 2014 blog post.
• All you need to know is that itʼs still describing density (frequency). Thatʼs the “TF” part. But, they do this in the context of whatʼs actually normal compared to the rest of the web. So, if you ratchet up specific keywords to a level thatʼs unusual for a topic, or start obsessing about your density of adverbs, Google perceives your site as a manipulative outlier and not a more relevant resource.
• Second, Google recognizes synonyms, word stems like “s” and “ing”, and other variations in language. Iʼd even say this is the one area that theyʼve improved most over the years.
• In the mid-2000s, it was extremely e?ective to keep keyword density around 5.5% for most purchase-related phrases.
• After about 6%-7%, dependent on the topic (TF-IDF and all), youʼd get hit with a penalty and watch that ranking go away entirely.
• These tactics no longer work. At least, not simply. Googleʼs constant work at recognizing natural language patterns is why.

Social signals are a ranking factor

This oneʼs sticky, so hear me out.
Since the early 2010s, every search engine optimization blog has been slathered in posts about social signals. These posts theorized that Google was deeply measuring by everything from your number of followers to your poor choice of Instagram filter.

Most of it was wrong then. The few that are still doing it are definitely wrong now.

• In 2010, Google said that this wasnʼt a thing.
• In 2012, they said that they were trying it.
• In 2014, they confessed that it didnʼt work out and was again not a thing.

For a while, Google+ was a thing.
A concept called “authorship,” where Google tried to figure out who individual content creators were on social media, and track/reward that… that was a thing. Little “+1” buttons on the results page were even (briefly) a thing.

All gone now
Google and Twitter have had an on/off relationship with Twitterʼs firehose data. And ʻsocialʼ can mean a lot of things.

Mostly, it means links: links to your articles from a social media site and internal links, pointing at those links, when you gain followers, from within those social sites.

We know that backlinks are a ranking factor. We know that social media can have a positive impact, directly and indirectly, on links. But thatʼs it.

Social media popularity correlates with link popularity, but so does being Kylie Jenner. Being Kylie Jenner is not a ranking factor.

Links donʼt matter

• Googleʼs Gary Illyles reminds us 10 times a year that PageRank is still one of the top factors in Google.
• PageRank is purely about links and link building. Itʼs at the core of how Google models popularity. Unlike content, itʼs the one element of Google thatʼs difficult to game at scale.
• Itʼs not going away.
• If doesnʼt matter how much artificial intelligence, voice search, or wearables, or whatever else becomes the fashionable SEO topic of the day.

Links are the best input that Google has for understanding how popular something is on the web.

So long as thereʼs a web, that will be true.

Content doesnʼt matter
If links are Googleʼs best measure of authority, content is our best measure of relevance. Content (mostly) tells Google what searches to rank your site on. Links (mostly) just tell Google how high to rank it. I canʼt imagine that this is really that controversial, but itʼs worth reiterating, because “content is dead” and “links are dead” are still two of the most popular search engine optimization mantras. Amazingly, at the exact same time. The reason is pretty simple. Too many hustlers have a vested interest in telling you that SEO is simpler than it is.

If theyʼre not good at doing, talking, or writing about content creation, of course, theyʼre going to try to sell you on links. The reverse is true as well.

“If you focus only on backlinks, youʼre neglecting the experience of your eventual target: a human being.

If thereʼs no content, the visitors essentially has to guide themselves through the sales process entirely on their own, without a lot to help them make a decision. And if thereʼs nothing to help move them towards a sale, they likely wonʼt make one.” – Maddy Osman, SEO Content Strategist, The Blogsmith

SEO is a one-time activity.
In my experience, there are two SEO paradigms.  The first, you see most from creative agencies and SEO so?ware vendors. In this world, SEO is a set of simple best practices. Itʼs 10 or 20 things that you can get right from a simple, relatively mindless audit. Look, I get it. That has a place. If SEO is a quick best practice, then sure, do it once and forget about it. If youʼre building a new website, you have to look at it this way. Otherwise, youʼre never done and ready to launch.

The truth is, though, that you are never done if you view SEO as a competitive activity. If 10,000 things impact Google (as we covered), you always have an opportunity. Thatʼs true until your site is plastered all over page 1 for everything that you could possibly benefit from in the rankings. This is typically 10s or 100s of thousands of keyword variations. If somebody ranks better than you in Google, thatʼs not just the way that it is. Thereʼs a math equation in play. And you have influence over virtually single every one its variables.

“SEO is a long-term investment. When you sign on for an SEO campaign youʼre saying, ʻIʼm using this% of my marketing budget so that my web site is stronger 6 months to a year from nowʼ.” – Joe Chilson, Head Writer and Project Manager, 1Digital Agency

Only the #1 position on Google matters
Itʼs true that in most studies, the #1 organic (unpaid) position yields 35% of clicks and falls o? dramatically from there. From around 15%, to 10%, and down to 2% by the bottom of page 1.

• Also, that only 3%-4% of clicks go to Google ads.
• Smart consumers can separate which is the T.V. show and which is the commercial.
• Few Google results are still just 10 blue links. As of 2019, there are hundreds of additional search features (and counting).

Using structured data, brands can make simple improvements, like making sure your review engine can display those little yellow review stars for products.

Or, it can be as elaborate as appearing 4 to 5 times on page 1 in all different callouts.

Buying 20,000 backlinks for $10 will work.

Have you considered buying backlinks in bulk?

By definition, the easier a link is to get, the worse that link is. In part, because this is how PageRank works. The more links on a page, the less those links are worth. But thereʼs another reality just doesnʼt settle in with business owners until itʼs too late.

• If youʼve ever purchased en mass… have you seen who also gets links from those same sites?Everybody. Beginning with the worst of the worst.
• If a link is available to anybody, by definition, thatʼs a bad link.
• Google calls these “free-for-all (FFA)” sites. Theyʼre loaded with porn, pill abiliates, and a multitude of other dodgy stu? that you probably donʼt want to see your brand beside.
• At best, thatʼs worthless.
• Worst case, you can find yourself in an SEO hole that could take years to dig back out of.

Using Google Ads will increase organic ranking.

• You hear this one a lot from PPC agencies.
• Itʼs not true. At least, according to Google.
• A case could be made that appearing in both ads and organic means more overall clicks.
• The source of this study is naturally biased, but they say that buying their ads could do just that.
• Click-through rate is a controversial ranking factor with some undeniable evidence. But there is zero evidence that suggests Google Ads will directly improve your organic search rankings.M “Paid ads can help you identify and refine the keywords you want to target organically, but paid campaigns wonʼt automatically improve your organic rankings.” – Ailsa Chibnall, CEO, Border7

Mobile-first is irrelevant.
The 2018 Mobile-First update was one of the impactful updates in years. Most donʼt understand it. Google has discussed mobile-friendliness as a factor since the 2000s. It fits right in line with dozens of long-time user experience factors.

Mobile-First didnʼt reward great mobile experiences so much as it punished content that was potentially invisible over mobile.

All those sites that use media queries to hide certain sections on mobile?   Their traffic fell on a clinic. Maybe you were one of them?

SEO doesnʼt work.

According to Borrell Associates, SEO will be an $80 billion industry by 2020.

• Itʼs not hard to test the basics. Drop a handful of keywords on a page. Wait a month or two. Theyʼll begin to rank.
• You can draw a few hundred clicks this way in a matter of hours.
• Compare that to what the Google Ads keyword planner would have cost you. Most commercial searches cost $5 or $10 average per click.
• Thatʼs $1000 – $2000 in would-be advertising placement that you now own and donʼt need to rent each month.
• Big brands are beginning to understand it.
• Theyʼre hiring entire SEO teams. Job titles like “taxonomist” are increasingly popular to serve specialized SEO roles.

On “SEO is Dead”

• “I donʼt know if this is a “myth” per se, or if itʼs just cynical marketers trying to drum up clicks on a sensational headline, but SEO is not ʻdead.ʼ
  • This headline is used for many things in marketing (for instance, Iʼve seen many ʻforms are deadʼ posts. Theyʼre not. Actually, SEO one of the few scalable growth channels for unicorn companies.
• Itʼs not just for well-funded startups or big players, though. All the companies Iʼve worked for (LawnStarter, CXL, HubSpot) have been largely supported organic acquisition (ie SEO and content marketing).
• Iʼve consulted for several small businesses (of many types including ecommerce, SaaS, services, etc.) and weʼve increased revenues primarily through content and SEO strategy.
• Anytime you read a post about how ʻ[X Marketing Tactic] if Dead,ʼ realize itʼs either written an inefective marketer or a cynical marketer looking for clicks, or the channel has been dead for years before the article was written. SEO is alive and well.” Alex Birkett, Sr. Growth Marketing Manager, HubSpot

Staying Ahead of the SEO Curve

SEO is evolving and you should, too. Brands are hiring teams of professionals, but itʼs di?icult to know who to trust. Even if SEO isnʼt your focus, it pays to be able to see through the misinformed, the contradictions, and the hustlers.

Listen (cautiously) to Google.
Follow Googleʼs own blogs, YouTube, and Twitter personalities.

• Listen to people like John Mueller, Gary Illyes, and Danny Sullivan.
• Theyʼre impressively engaged with the community and give out far more information than they owe us.
• As you do, realize that Google itself is complicated. Itʼs not managed by a single person and Googlers frequently contradict each other.
• Googlers frequently answer direct SEO questions with “we think you should…”, not because itʼs how they rank, but because it might actually be less manipulative of their results.

Choose your experts carefully

In nearly 17 years of SEO, I canʼt name one professional SEO that I agree with 100% of the time. Thereʼs only a select few that I agree with 95%. And thatʼs part of the fun. SEO is opaque.

Itʼs why, when we fact check SEO, it all fits on a sliding scale of confidence.

• Many of the people that Iʼve learned from are pretty quiet these days, but occasionally active.
• People like Aaron Wall, Todd Malicote, A.J. Kohn, and others. In the time that Iʼve done this, it seems that two full generations of SEOʼers have come and gone.
• Also realize that most bloggers and speakers optimize their business for success very differently from you. There are two SEO industries. Every year there are sexy new SEO tactics that are wildly inefficient or just donʼt work in an industry that isnʼt all about doing search engine optimization for SEOs to talk about more SEO.
• Itʼs fun to follow that stut, but it may not be for you. Keep to systems.

Keep experimenting.
Try things.
A lot of on-page SEO is very simple to try, wait a few months, and see. Many of the most creative SEO strategies still benefit from just taking those well- educated shots in the dark. If time and resources allow, maintain a stunt double website or brand.

Lastly, talk about your experiences with peers. Theyʼre trying things that you probably havenʼt thought about to drive tra?ic.

BE CONS I STENT DO YOUR RESEARCH  REPEAT

The biggest myth I see is that SEO is hard. There are so many “gurus” and “experts” that make SEO seem like its rocket science when it really isnʼt. We have been easily able to capture position 0 (the snippet section) on Google in as little as 2 days by keeping our SEO strategy very simple.

• We pick the keywords we want to go after.
• We google those keywords and find the top content that already appears for that search term.
• We then build content that is slightly better (and better can just be structural, i.e. more Headline tags on the right terms) than the existing content, and we throw in a FAQ section that includes headline tags for the “People may also ask” questions that you see on Google for your desired term.

Then, we wait and see what happens. If it starts to rank, we then continue to build out that content, or if it is a list, we might find new content to in- link to.

For example, say, I want to rank to “best Nike running shoes.”

I will start by googling for that term and what I will discover is that most of the top content is listicles, i.e. top 10 Nike running shoes. Then, I start to build my own content modeling the people who already rank. Then, once I am done, I will start to integrate an FAQ based on the “People may also ask” section on Google, i.e. “What are the most comfortable Nike running shoes?” and “What is the best Nike shoe for long distance running”. Now, I sit back and wait for the article to rank. Once it starts to rank, I might ensure its placement by expanding on that content with in-links to individual reviews of the shoes I mentioned in my list. Overall, this strategy is extremely effective and more importantly, it is not rocket science.

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