SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2015

SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2015

SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2015!

Myth #1 Setting up Google Authorship can increase my search visibility & clickthrough rates.
Bad news, friends: In June of 2014, Google removed Google Authorship photos from search engine results pages. While your name and byline would still appear, your beautiful headshot would not.So for 2015 — and the foreseeable future — you can forget about Authorship altogether: It no longer exists.

Myth #2
I must submit my site to Google.
The idea that you need to submit your website to Google in order to appear in search results (or rank) is nonsense.
While a brand new site can submit its URL to Google directly, a search engine like Google can still find your site without you submitting it.

And remember, a submission does not guarantee anything. Crawlers will find your site and index it in due time, so don’t worry about this idea of needing to “tell” Google about your site.

Myth #3 More links are better than more content.
This is something that often comes along with the question, “Which should I invest in, link building or content generation?” Links are an important part of your website’s authority but links wont work without good content. However, if you have budget to invest in your website, I would say, first “Hire someone to write for you.” and then go for link building.
Myth #4 Having a secure (HTTPS encrypted) site
isn’t important for SEO.
In August of 2014, Google announced that it had started using HTTPS as a signal in their ranking algorithms, which means if your website still relies on standard HTTP, your rankings could su?er as a result.For now, however, HTTPS remains a "lightweight" signal, a?ecting fewer than 1% of global queries ( according to Google). So while it’s clear that Google wants everyone to move over to the more secure HTTPS protocol, don’t freak out if you haven’t done it yet. There are more important factors that Google is looking at, such as the presence of high-quality content.
Myth #5 Meta descriptions have a huge impact on search rankings

Meta descriptions are HTML attributes that concisely explain the contents of webpages. You’ve seen them before on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), where they’re commonly used as preview snippets. So, it’d make sense that Google’s algorithm would take these meta descriptions into account when determining search rankings … right? Well, not so much.

Google announced back in 2009 that meta descriptions (and meta keywords) have no bearing on search rankings. That’s not to say, however, that these descriptions aren’t important for SEO. On the contrary: Meta descriptions present a major opportunity to separate yourself from the ri?-ra? and convince searchers that your page is worth navigating to.

Having a relevant, compelling meta description can be the di?erence between a searcher who clicks through to your page and one who clicks elsewhere.

Myth #6 Keyword optimization is THE key to SEO
Until search engines are able to enter our brains and read our thoughts, we'll always need to use written language in order to make search queries. We need to use keywords to communicate.

That being said, it’s important to realize that Google is no longer trying to match the keywords you type into its search engine to the keywords of a web page. Instead, it's trying to understand the intent behind the keywords you type so it can match that intent to relevant, high-quality content.


The bottom line: search engines of the future aren't going to punish folks for underusing keywords or failing to have an expertly crafted, keyword-optimized page title ... but they will continue to punish folks for overusing keywords.

Myth #7 The H1 is the most important on-page element

Think of the content structure on your webpage as an outline. It’s a tiered approach to presenting information to users and search engines. What title tag your headline is wrapped in has little to no influence on your overall SEO -- that title tag (whether it’s an H1, H2, H3, etc.) is only used for styling purposes.

The H1 is part of your CSS (custom style sheet) that a designer puts together to reference what font styling and size will be applied to a particular piece of content. This used to be more important, but search engines are smarter these days, and -- unfortunately -- people spammed this to death.

So, it really doesn’t matter what header tag you use, as long as you present your most important concepts upfront and closer to the top of the page. Remember, you’re optimizing your page for users first and foremost, which means that you want to tell them

ASAP what your page is about through a clear headline.
Myth #8 Local SEO doesn’t matter anymore
This myth couldn't be further from the truth. If you're a local business, optimizing for local search won't only help you get found, but it will help you get found by people who are nearby and more likely to buy from you.
Looking forward, Google will continue to take steps to bubble the best local content to the surface of search results. Need some proof? In July of 2014, Google took a major step in this direction with the release of its new Pigeon algorithm. The algorithm treats local search rankings more like traditional search rankings, taking hundreds of ranking signals into account. Pigeon also improved the way Google evaluates distance when determining rankings.

The bottom line: local SEO matters, probably more so now than ever before.
I hope this clear many of most common myths about seo