Google’s search engine is a fantastic platform for gaining quality traffic. When following correct methods, using organic search traffic for revenue and website traffic is beneficial. However, there are many myths when it comes to SEO, search engine marketing and search engines in general.
Today, I want to help you forget them ALL!
The issue with many search engine myths is that over time, they have become so used and over-used, discussed, blogged about, shared….they are thought to be the truth. And, they just aren’t.
Over time, the myths can lead to some dangerous digital marketing trends that business owners attempt all the time.
After this article, you are going to know why paid advertising (PPC) and organic search traffic are different; but can be thought of as kissing cousins. You will understand the impact of social media, bounce rate and session times (time on site) after today. And, you will start to understand the real meaning that search is trying to meet with users, website owners, advertisers and business.
1 – We do PPC, so we don’t need SEO
Companies that are focused on generating leads, and growing their visibility online, will most likely hire a web marketing company. From here, the issue of search engine marketing will likely enter the conversation. And, if a business wants fast results from search engines, and Google specifically, the issue of online advertising becomes a focus, THE focus, right?
However, as the leads come in, online advertising becomes a business focus. PPC alone seems to be the most cost-effective method of customer acquisition and growth.
The truth is the organic search (SEO) can exist alongside online advertising
Why would you do this?
The cost! “Cost-effective” means getting the right return for the cost.
For instance, you might notice that keywords, both broad and exact, have a cost of $30.00+ per click. You should then turn to longtail keywords for PPC, and those higher cost PPC keywords for organic search. You should generate content, do content marketing and link building around those topics and longtail keywords instead.
Basically, expensive keywords mean using content marketing and organic search traffic. Cheaper keywords for search terms means using online advertising and PPC (price per click) instead.
In either case, you do both alongside of each other for the best results possible.
2 – Social media has ZERO impact on search engines
Social media marketing has a stigma with business owners that needs broken. Social media is not only to advertise your business, nor is it a venue for specific users, or only teenagers, or only housewives. As crazy as it seems social media has an even more basic and core usage…
Social media is for social interactions!
The other thing that you should know for 2015 and next year?
Social media signals are ranking signals in Google search
BOOM! The truth bomb just blew up!
Think about the above in this way. Social media is a collection of people talking to each other about things. Namely, these are usually things that they like, or things that they hate, right?
This means that by becoming social, getting quality content and conversation into the hands of people, you are going down the right path. To truly use the improvements in ranking that Google can give, you must start, expand and validate conversations. As well, when you take part in conversations with your expertise, you validate yourself and your brand.
Moral of the story? Be Social!
3 – Content will always let you rank
So I have a confession…I have always been in the majority of people stating that content is king. My tune changed last year to have content as the king, the kingdom and everything therein.
Here is the REAL DEAL truth for 2016 as far as content goes. And that is that content without content marketing will likely fall on deaf ears.
The truth about content, Google finding it and users responding to it?
Content marketing will be as important as content creation in 2016
Included you will see the results for the last 360+ days of another blog that I write for. I do not do search engine marketing, nor a lot of content marketing for this brand. The ONLY thing that I have focused on in the last 12 months is some HARO responses, and occasionally built content – that is it.
What happened?
Marketed content saw increases in traffic of 500% over the next week. Building content, repeatedly, saw barely a fourth of that. But every time I marketed even older content, I saw massive traffic increases.
This experiment taught me that the best way to get information indexed and into the hands of Google organic search users, as well as people in general, is to market your content as much as you are creating your content.
Brands that simply create, create, create content on topics, even valuable information, might fall to the ground.
I’ve also reproduced this in athletic footwear and the landscaping industries. Extended traffic was seen after the marketing and interactions with content marketing. With content creation alone? Nothing.
4 – SEO is the ONLY marketing we need to use
This myth about SEO sounds a bit “off”…I understand. But, let me explain.
Digital marketing (online marketing, internet marketing, whatever you want to call it), uses content creation, SEO/SEM, social media, email marketing, links, paid advertising and more to generate traffic and visibility. However, SEO gets lost in this as a ‘prime’ form of marketing on the internet.
SEO is not marketing – but it is a form of it
SEO (search engine optimization) is the method and principles of structurally building your brand for better search inter-actions. Now, in contrast, search engine marketing is the action of spreading that content and your website over the internet to gain search engine ranking strength.
To extend this conversation, SEO also isn’t the only thing done when someone performs SEO actions on a website. I will do the structural items, but I will also do competition analysis, content creation, content marketing and more.
5 – We have a high PageRank, so we’re fine
PageRank used to be the defining metric that website owners, visitors and Google Search used to give authority scoring to a website or brand. Simply put, PageRank, when higher, theoretically, meant a better site.
Because of this “aura of awesome” with PageRank, SEO professionala, internet marketers and even website owners found multiple ways to raise PageRank artificially and over time naturally. And, because of this, websites were created, linked to and filled with content for search engines and NOT for users.
PageRank is dead…
In October of 2013, Matt Cutts, then the head of Google’s Spam Team for Google Search eluded ot the fact that he “would be surprised” if PageRank was updated again. Add to this a video that surfaced late last year.
This video was from a Google Webmaster Central Webinar in October of 2014 (wait for the 20:30 mark or so).
PageRank is simply a metric. Use real metrics that show the value of your site for end-users like bounce-rate, CTR % and time on site instead.
6 – We don’t need video or images to rank higher
I believe, after talking to business owners, that this myth is more due to the cost that is believed to be associated with these pieces of content. In fact, video creation, video marketing and video editing can be extremely costly.
However, you cannot let cost be the reason why you don’t see the value of ranking in search engines with video and/or images.
Content can be free, but user experience can cost you a lot
For images, we can strengthen a piece of content on a page. How?
- Name the image using context and keywords
- Brand the image with human-readable text and logo
- Host the image on your website URL
- Use the ALT attribute for SEO
- Optimize the image size and speed for the viewing platform
For video, embedding this content a webpage can do one thing, and do it in a very big way – it can increase your “time on site” or session time metric. The longer that a visitor is on a page, and the longer their visit to the website overall, the more useful your website and articles are valued in search engine rankings.
As said, including these pieces of content is about the user experience. If you can do that, the metrics associated with better ranking changes in a positive way for your website.
For anyone still debating the cost of these types of media, instead, let me show you the value and the real cost. When Google ranks you lower for having walls of text, and a poor user experience, what is the cost? And when users and visitors to your website start slowly declining in numbers, what is your cost?
7 – Displaying your contact information is enough
Even though we are fast-approaching 2016, some business websites still give me the feel of 1995. Remember when the internet first became a “thing”? When business simply through up their contact details, and they got phone calls and faxes?
Fast forward 20 years later, and you have the same thing happening. Emails, address, phone numbers and other contact information on display, but in image and text-based formats.
The world is mobile and clicking is connecting
You must link your phone number to a phone number. You MUST link your email as an email. Link your address to a Google Map. And link your name to the website URL, your LinkedIn profile, your Twitter, your Facebook or your Google+ account.
Mobile users (next gen devices, cell phones and tablets) make up anywhere from 40% – 60% of internet traffic to most small business websites. By not having your contact details in linkable, actionable form, you are killing the amount of conversions that you ‘could’ be seeing.
Remember, brochure websites, stale templatized brand pages worked in the past because technology was not a mobile culture.
8 – Only focus on ranking for keywords
Keywords are terms that users of any search device use to retrieve information from. For Google search, keywords are the all-important ranking targets for a user’s query.
In years past, marketers and quality SEOs would be defined by how many keywords that they could rank for, in what time, and in what method. Everything from spammy content, thin content and spammy link-building filled the internet…
And then Penguin, Panda and Hummingbird happened. And, Google Search became more about users of the search engine, and less about gaming the system.
Keywords don’t matter – queries and user intent does now
Currently, keywords are only important for one thing – PPC advertising. For organic search traffic, the focus is on user queries. What is the different?
If I run a search for “best Pittsburgh seo company”, that is my query. That is what I, as a Google search engine user, typed in and am looking for. However, for advertisers, the keywords might be:
- Pittsburgh SEO
- seo company
- best Pittsburgh seo
See the difference?
For content creation in 2016, think about topics, instead of only keywords, and user intent instead of focusing on one term or phrase. Building that relevance will let you rank for what you want to, as well as providing a solid base for users to understand the content and come back for more.
9 – Link building has to be done to rank in search engines
This is a misconception from the early 2000s. However, this is not 100% false either.
Remember, initially, search engines could ONLY determine a brand’s “rank” within a community and meeting user needs by being linked to a lot. Google then used the anchor text (the text people would click on), to make the association between a website the user was currently on to the website the user was clicking to enter. If the content (at the time, keyword density) was similar, THAT was the context.
But, just like other methods of marketing, the game could be messed with. Marketers started to keyword stuff content, links, anchor text and more in an effort to spoof Google.
Link building now has more of a negative connotation to it because of this. Even though, without it, no one would be linking one website to another.
Trust building and brand awareness carries better results
Link building is not dead. Neither is guest posting on websites. Neither is SEO, SEM and building awareness through finding and creating links to your website.
What is dead is the equation that “your keywords + lots of links = better rankings in Google”.
Now, Google looks for paid links and devalues them. Google looks for public and unauthorized sources of links, and devalues those. Google also looks to see if you are having thin content or poor content or spam content on your website, but still having thousands upon thousands of links…as it looks like you are spamming!
Instead, if you contact other industry professionals, regional authorities and influencers in your market about your content and brand, the word starts to spread. The links start to become natural, and gained based on your own authority and trust, rather than on a sale or with spam.
10 – A new website design does NOTHING for us!
How many local businesses in your area have websites? And of those, how many look like they are 5, 7 or even 10+ years old?
In some regions, with some industries, nearly all of the business websites might look like this. They might look like they were built just to have information out online, and less about making a great user experience for visitors, clients and customers.
Plus, your old layout might have been focused on the wrong goals.
A new website design will mean a better experience…and more
The first thing a new website design does is that it shows an update to your brand. A new, fresh web design will give a better feel to the website – almost like you care about the face of your online business, so you care about your business.
The next thing that a website design should do is to be mobile friendly and responsive. Cell phone users are active and are 50%, in most circumstances, of your online search users and website visitors.
Finally, most new website designs, especially when your website is on a CMS like WordPress or Joomla, is SEO-centric in it’s layout, structure and use. This goes a long way when you are trying to gain continuous ground in organic search traffic from Google and Bing.
A note on mobile friendly, currently, Google is slowly devaluing your website if it is not mobile friendly. And so, this will impact organic search search traffic. Even though you think that the change is unnecessary, the hundreds and thousands of visitors to your website knows that it was.
11 – We already had our website “SEO’d” in 2014 (or 2013); and don’t need to now
SEO, at its most simple action, is just a structural change that allows search engines to more accurately find and index our websites. We do this, not against what search engines want us to do, but under their own guidelines and recommendations.
However, SEO is not just about structuring the content, nor structuring the pages.
In fact, in Google’s own guidelines for SEO for webmasters, discussions about content, links and more are discussed. This is kind of the clear sign that simply building a website is not enough. You also have to market that website, grow your website and, over time, you will be growing the SEO strength of your website.
SEO is a process, SEM is a process
Remember, search engines are about the process. Over time, with the right methods and goals, you will slowly (sometimes quickly) rise in rankings in Google.
Hiring someone to perform SEO on your website once will definitely put you in a better position in Google’s search engine. You will see your organic search traffic increase. And, most likely, as the months go on, you will see secondary increases as well (your email list will grow, your revenue will increase, etc).
With that being said, if you hire someone long-term (6 months, a year, two years, etc), you will see stronger results. Likely, you will see more strong increases, constantly growing traffic and revenue as well as better rankings for your keywords and queries that you are targeting. This is why hiring an SEO consultation or a search engine marketing consultant over the long term means bigger and bigger results.
12 – Fresh content ranks quickly
As early as a decade ago, fresh content was thought to rank fast. I don’t mean that this would help a brand, I literally mean that if you put up an article, you would rank instantly.
In some cases, this could work long-term.
However, in most cases, the article would be seen for a few hours in the first page of Google for some long tail keywords, linked keywords and title lookups. There was a large error with the belief that the article was ‘really’ ranking.
The first issue was that, if you were signed into Google while creating the article, Google kinda knew that you were at the website, and possibly had ran searches concerning that site as well – which means it would rank higher for you.
The other large issue was because of Google+. If you are signed into Google (any service), and you posted to Google+, you would see those listings and those brand links higher than others.
Because of these two items alone, Google’s rankings were (and still are), skewed.
Fresh content helps rank a brand
The misconception about fresh content and its effect in search engines might have started with MOZ’s 2011 article on fresh content and ranking. During the conversation, fresh content was shown to help brands rank higher. Creating more content, linking to quality older content and even editing the older content all had positive effects in search.
However, these effects were for the brand.
So, how do you use freshness to increase search engine rankings?
- DO NOT think the pages will rank fast
- DO make ever-green content and use fresh content to link into it to boost it further over time
- DO update your content as necessary (edit the page for ever-green, huge posts – create new for smaller)
- DO NOT expect even ever-green content to rank fast without a lot of marketing support
BONUS – “Only link with your keywords for better rankings”
Using anchor text that is only your keywords will throw red flags all over to Google. In fact, using this could get your website a manual action for spammy links.
Instead, think about a natural conversation. Sometimes you will mention a brand owner, other times you will mention the brand name and other times you will even mention the URL/address.
BONUS – “Getting another thousand visitors a month means our revenue will go up”
Traffic, alone, does not equal profits.
As a business owner, you know this is true. Unless your product or service matches a need, you will never see the benefit of traffic over quality traffic.
Targeted traffic is how you win this game. Quality AND quantity will net you wins.
BONUS – “Google search engine is the only one that sees results”
Google search engine, is not the only search engine. Bing search engine is a close second, and definitely seeing popularity. With a new browser from Microsoft, and Bing being the default for Mozilla browsers, Bing is growing.
But do not forget about the other search engines out there. You will notice Yahoo!, Ask, AOL Search, Yandex, Duck Duck Go! and DogPile are all useful in finding customers. Facebook is growing it’s search capabilities as well. And don’t forget about YouTube as a search engine.
The point being that Google Search is not the only player in the game. They cast a shadow on their competition, but some of your potential customers like the shade.
If you focus ONLY on traffic, you will never see the benefit of real customers coming through your doors. Instead, focus on the correct internet marketing tactics to find the correct customers.
BONUS – “For that price? We can just do it ourselves!”
I know things are difficult trying to deal with a thousand internet marketers vying for your marketing dollars. And, likewise, you might have even have purchased services, only to be burned in the end.
So, it might make sense to want to perform your own SEO. You save on the costs, and you can perform what is needed as long as possible.
However, if you spend all of your time marketing, how can you spend any time on your actual business.
Instead, it makes much more sense to hire a professional SEO consultant or internet marketing expert that you grow to trust, let them do their job while you are doing yours.
Are you ready for THAT kind of SEO consultant?
Then give me an email today at email@jamesblews.com. We can schedule a consultation where we will discuss your brand, your website, your current efforts and what your competition is doing to grab organic search traffic and customers.
