The 7 myths of Search Engine Optimisation - Part 1

Recently I had to give a presentation on Digital Marketing to a client. One of the key slides we focused was on the topic of “SEO Myths”.

I have therefore decided to write these myths up a post for others to add to and discuss.

Reaching 1st position in Google is the only aim of SEO
This is wrong advice in a couple of key areas:

1. What terms are you actually focusing on? If you’re either striving for a top place ranking on an obscure term or alternatively trying to be top for everything… think again. You should be looking at those terms that meet your KPI’s (e.g. deliver conversions) and have enough search volume to justify the effort of attempting to reach first place
2. Sometimes 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) place is good enough. If you’re targeting a popular search term and have reached the first page in Google, but there are bigger, more reputable and faster sites above you, you might be content with that (especially if it gets you decent & quality traffic)

A single teenager in a bedroom can out-smart Google
You still hear this sort of phrase spoken by people in the marketing industry “I know a genius, they have worked out how to ‘beat’ Google and get my sites to number one”. And each time… I feel myself suppressing a small scream. Why?

1. Just one person (who does not work at Google) who has only amassed knowledge from reading books, blogs and other such material on the subject of SEO knows everything on the subject.
2. Google hires offices full of very (very) clever people… many of whom have PHD’s and such qualifications, to constantly revise their search algorithms and the influence of different ranking factors. And even most of them don’t know everything on the subject.
3. You never ‘beat’ Google. It’s not a fight or a race… SEO is both an art and a science to getting your website legitimately up the rankings of the most popular western search engine.
   (and even if you temporarily manage to boost your rankings via less-than-legitimate means... there's a chance you'll get found out)

You can ignore SEO by just creating good content
OK, yes the creation of well written content helps SEO. But that content must also be:

• Relevant: Or else you’re just producing off-topic copy that serves no optimisation purpose 
• Structured: If you’re not adding layout, headings, bullet points, etc. then you’re not producing content, you’re just typing. 
• Linked: Are you creating lots of ‘orphaned’ pages to drop visitors into from other campaigns such as email PPC, etc.? Please don’t!