As an experienced SEO company in Surrey, Thunderbolt Digital have heard our fair share of hearsay and falsehoods, and have had to educate many of our clients who’ve had the wool pulled over their eyes by more unscrupulous companies looking to make a quick buck. SEO is hard work, and is still seen as mysterious to those outside the industry, meaning misinformation is rampant – but it doesn’t have to be like this! Watch out for the following myths, and make sure you don’t believe them when working on your SEO strategy!
Your Work’s Done When You Reach Page One
Some believe that SEO is like a race, and that once you are past the finish line, you can kick back and relax – but that is not the case at all! SEO is a sustained, ongoing effort that must be regularly updated and monitored in order to maintain your position. Google’s algorithm is constantly in flux, and changes must be made in order to keep up. After all, most high ranking results are not only quality, but up to date, too.
Local SEO also updates more frequently, so if you’re attempting to rank locally, you’ll need to keep an even closer eye on your competition in order to stay on top.
Good SEO Guarantees Sales
It’s easy to think that getting the coveted number one spot on Google will suddenly lead to a massive increase in interest, sales, and revenue, but many business owners are dismayed to find that things are not quite as simple as that! Ranking high in search results guarantees nothing except that your site will be seen first when searching for specific keywords – there’s no guarantee that any users will visit your site, or even stick around to properly view things, let alone purchase anything!
Like most things in digital marketing, SEO is something that should be used in conjunction with other tools and methods in order to see the greatest effect. You should work on snippet copy to make users click on your site to begin with, as well as ensure that your web design makes things easy for customers and doesn’t scare them away. You’ll also want to increase your site load speed to lower your bounce rate, and assess your CTAs and other methods that convert visitors into paying customers. In other words, SEO is but one facet of your digital strategy!
The More The Merrier
A lot of people think that when it comes to SEO, the more pages you have on your site, the higher you’ll rank, or, similarly, the more (back)links you have, the better your site will perform in search engine results. There is even a widely-held belief that domain age will help you rank!
Unfortunately, none of these are true. In the old days, quantity was often enough to give you a boost when it came to SEO, but these days, such tactics are ineffective due to Google’s focus on quality and authority. You’re far likelier to perform better with fewer, high quality links and pages than the reverse. In fact, links that are from suspicious sources can even get you penalised by Google, meaning you need to keep an eye on your backlinks and disavow sketchy ones as needed.