SEO Myths To Stop Believing

In your quest to market your company as effectively as possible, you likely know a few things about search engine optimization. Do you know SEO fact from fiction? As a local and reliable SEO company in Santa Rosa, Fitz Designz wants to steer customers and their web design and marketing goals in the right direction. Take your content marketing to the next level by leaving these SEO myths behind.

Myth 1: XML Sitemaps Increase Your Search Rankings

Perhaps you installed Google's XML Sitemaps generator on your blog to increase your search engine rankings. While we recommend XML sitemaps to make it quick and easy for search engines to index your site, they do not boost your search engine rankings. Rather than using XML sitemap generators for search engine results, rely on them to give search engines information on your site and help search engines discover your new content faster.

Myth 2: Meta Tags No Longer Matter

Business owners use meta tags to preview webpage material in search results. You may view them as unnecessary, but they help you and your company more than you may realize. Meta tags help your site and company look more professional to consumers, which could encourage your target customer to check out your products and services. If you want to improve your content marketing strategy and reach a wider audience, include meta tags and meta descriptions on your site and rely on an experienced SEO company in Santa Rosa.

Myth 3: Leading Domains Boost Rankings

While domains that end in ".com" land high on search engine results, it makes more sense to concentrate more on whether your commercial site's domain name contains a recognizable name or term . After all, a professional, memorable name does more company than snatching a leading domain name.

If you already have a name for your company, focus on connecting to social media influencers, offering your audience quality content and providing customers with valuable information. Even if you have a less common domain name, that does not mean your site cannot perform well in search engine rankings.

Myth 4: Anchor Text Requires a Target Keyword

While you don't want to stuff your content to the brim with keywords, you want to keep using keywords in the anchor text, the text you click on in a hyperlink. The key to finding the balance between the two concepts is to diversify your anchor text. Try using primary and secondary keywords, generic keywords, your URL and your brand as anchor texts.

Myth 5: Search Engines Find and Index New Content

Rather than wait for search engines to crawl and find your new content, which could take a couple of days, do your part to help them along. Downloading an XML sitemap generator on your blog is a great place to start, and so is sharing new content on your social media profiles. Ping various web services, so they know when you publish new content.

Myth 6: SEO Agencies Help Your Business Get Leading Rankings Quickly

With this myth, we do not want to dissuade you from working with an SEO company. Instead, we want to caution you against working with an SEO agency that say they grantee clients top search engine results. The best you should expect is improved search engine performance. Keywords change every day, and it's impossible to predict tomorrow's leading keyphrases and words, which means SEO companies cannot promise fast ranking results.

You could enjoy better results and success with SEO agencies when you understand where and how they help. Agencies are great for business owners who don't have time to maintain and update their commercial sites. They're also ideal for companies that want to boost search traffic, need help to maximize long-tail keywords or want to stay current on the SEO industry.

Myth 7: You Don't Need To Worry About Keyword Research

With so many keyword variations, some business owners don't see the use for keyword research. Rather than ignore the importance of keyword research, entrepreneurs should instead ignore keyword-heavy anchor text and stuffing several keywords into a single sentence.

Other than relying on popular keyword planners, another good way to navigate keyword research is to identify your competitor's keywords. After all, they've already done the hard work for you, so you may as well use it to your advantage.

Myth 8: Guest Blogging Has a Place in SEO

Guest blogging has long history of shady and spamy practices in the SEO strategy. In June 2020, Google’s John Mueller stated that Google has been devaluing guest blog post links for the past several years. Google believes that guest post links are unnatural since the article writer essentially places them on the site with the sole purpose of link building. There are  plenty of cost- and time-effective, strategies that are more likely to result in SEO benefits than guest posting is.

Contact Us Today 

Do any of these myths sound familiar? To help separate fact from fiction, contact Fitz Designz at 707-241-3489. If you like, submit an online form.