11 SEO Myths You Should Unfollow and Forget

Eight spiders end their lives in your mouth yearly. Knuckles cracking causes arthritis. Goldfish has a 3-second memory. 

That’s not just random facts but some of the most popular myths. Thus, your mouth isn’t on the list of spiders’ interests, crack knuckles for years, and get nothing except people hating you, and pls, stop bullying goldfishes! Scientists have proved that this little fish remembers places, dinner time, navigation routes, and associates colors with food rewards for MONTHS after training. 

The same case is with SEO. 

The great Google secret of ranking algorithms is the reason for ideas like “long-form articles rank best of all,” “it is better to create a new article than update the old one,” or “low-volume keywords don’t work.”

Are they real? Find the answer in our top 11 common SEO myths and their refutation with genuinely effective strategies.

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#1 Collect All The Backlinks You Can

The first of SEO myths is about links to your website that are published on other websites - backlinks. They are crucial because, for Google, they mean that other websites find your website a credible and reliable source of information.

Here is how it works: your ranking is growing in correlation with the number of backlinks you get. Thus, businesses tend to treat all the backlinks as good. 

The reality:

According to the Backlinko report, high-quality backlinks are really in the list of 200 Google ranking factors. However, they talked about high-quality backlinks from relevant to your niche, trustworthy websites.  

Opposite to that are low-quality links from websites that don’t have credibility. A number of spammy links can downgrade your credibility, ranking, or even worse ― benign suspected for buying links and get penalized!

That’s why it is essential to check your backlink profile regularly and remove wrong links in Google Search Console or by sending a relevant request to a company. 

As for a backlink strategy, we advise using the skyscraper technique and building links via comments or guest posting. Here is a list of requirements for websites where to publish them:

A backlink from such a website in your industry brings much more to your site authority than ten links from less-quality irrelevant resources. That's why it's important to consider relying on a web scraping service where you can collect all important data on websites that suit your niche best.

Pro tip: Complement your backlink strategy with internal links from your website.  Let’s say you publish an expert guide on “Creating resilient eCommerce logistics” that should convert leads. Place links to this page on other articles within your blog under relevant anchors like “strengthening your supply chain,” “optimizing logistics,” and other similar terms. Personally, I use 5–10 keywords from the article for that goal. 

Thus, you help Google crawl your website and increase the time readers spend on your blog. 

2. It Is Enough To Do SEO Once

The second of SEO myths is about the moment when finally you’ve finished optimizing your website. All pages’ content is relevant to the target keywords and some of them even got first positions! You celebrated the first visitors, but after some time the traffic line in the weekly report dropped lower and lower. 

Panic! There are thoughts about possible reasons, solutions, and a huge desire to make a voodoo doll of that SEO manager who said “All you should do is just track traffic and positions.”

The reality:

SEO rules change all the time. Trying to provide its users with the most relevant and quality content, Google constantly improves its algorithms and sets new requirements for companies and that's how Google SGE appeared. 

That’s why, after publishing some SEO-optimized landing page or article, you need to track that it holds its position in search engine results.

Here are some things you should do regularly:

• Audit and resolve issues on your website. 

• Track position changes and update content if needed. Let’s say, add new keywords, remove outdated information, and add relevant links.
• Looking for new keywords to target with relevant content.

Tracking and reacting to these changes will keep you on the top of the search engine results pages. 

3. Keyword Stuffing Improves Rankings

The idea of “if you want higher ranking, insert into the text as many keywords as you can” is definitely among the top myths in this list. The number of keywords in the text is a clear metric called keyword density.

Ideally, it should show search engines that this exact text is 200% relevant to the target audience’s request. The result: better positions. 

The reality: 

Too high keyword density makes your text impossible to read. 

An example of keyword stuffing. Image source. 

People will understand that this text is more for robots and leave your website. That’ll be tracked as a negative tendency in your behavior metrics, which search engine reads. On top of that, Google search engine launched a July update with Stricter measuring against keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique. The punishment: your website can be penalized.

Pro tip: It is better to keep your keyword density below 3% and put them in your copy naturally. You can easily count this metric: count the number of times you’ve used the target keyword, divide it by the total number of words in your copy, and multiply by 100.

Image source.

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For example, at this point, this article has 3000 words, 38 of which are SEO. According to the formula, the SEO keyword density is 1,3%, which is a great result.

4. Long-form content brings better results 

This SEO strategy has two backgrounds. The 1st comes from Google naming low-value content “thin” which was understood as a characteristic of a “text length.” The 2nd came from the 2023 State of Content Marketing Report, claiming the better efficiency of articles over 1k words.

That’s why some SEO experts recommend long-form content creation rather than short.

The reality:

Unfortunately, there is no ideal text length that would guarantee your first position. It all depends on the quality, depth, and structure of content you provide for a specific search intent. Thus, a 1,000-word article that provides explicit expert content on the topic has much more chance of being ranked than a 3,000-word post full of water and wrong subtopics. All in all, you need to write a copy that converts, without paying much attention to the length.

5. Social Media Has No Impact on SEO

This is one of SEO myths about whether to invest your team’s time in the SEO article distribution on social media or not. I’ve done that and know that depending on the number of relevant communities you have, it can take up to two hours. 

But what do all those Instagram likes have in common with Google algorithms? Some experts say “nothing” and all that is a waste of time and money.

The reality:

You won’t find social media reposts, comments and likes in the list of search engine ranking recommendations. At the same time, there is a list of cases proving their positive influence on SERP position, for instance, the Searchmetrics report and the Hootsuite experiment. By the way, the last one is about a 22% ranking boost of social media shares. 

Neil Patel agrees with that and supports this idea with the following arguments:

• The report with data on his blog posts’ traffic and social media engagement where the best articles have the highest social media reactions.

Image source. 

• Social media content shows up at the top of the search results.
• Customers search for helpful info on socials as well as on Bing or Google.

Thus, we recommend not to ignore the social media engagement step of the SEO content production.

6. Google Ranks Fresh Content Best Of All

Let’s say you have an article about the best customer support tools written in 2020 with low positions. You want to take the top 3 position on this keyword. And here is a question: should you write a new post or update an old one?

Some people say it is better to write something new. The fresh content will be ranked better because Google search engine loves new content. 

The reality: 

Yes, but Google said about fresh content. In 2011, they announced it as a ranking priority. But fresh is not about the date of your content publication. According to Google, fresh content is about up-to-date information you share. 

For example, what’s the point in publishing 2022 customer support stats in 2024? 

In the case of the best customer support tools article, there is no need to create a new post. You can just update tools’ descriptions, features, pricing, publication data, and add a new list of keywords. And voilà Google loves it again!

7. Your mobile site doesn’t impact your ranking

Development of the desktop version of the website is a priority. It is a core thing for SEO to start. And that’s where some of the businesses stop. The reason is apparent - the mobile version is another investment. On top of that, there is a common idea that it won’t influence search ranking. Is it true?

The reality:

Google thinks the opposite. They follow the idea that every person should get an outstanding experience. Since 76% of consumers shop on smartphones, in 2018, Google dropped an update about the mobile version priority indexing factor.

The result: mobile-friendly websites take better positions in SERP.

How? Make the design of your site responsive.

8. SEO Brings Instant Results

There are people who believe that SEO is smth like paid ads. You published an SEO-optimized article, and almost the next day, all the search terms you targeted took the first positions in their SERP. The result: thousands of (depending on the keyword search volume) visitors are on your website. 

The ideas like “We can guarantee you will be on page 1 for these 20 keywords” or “Using our strategy, your content will rank in no time!” you may meet on landings and ads of SEO agencies. Is it true?

The reality:

There are two scenarios: they use black hat SEO techniques, or they lie to you. 

SEO-optimized content doesn’t bring traffic instantly. From my experience, it takes 3-5 months with many IFs. Let’s say you write high-quality, relevant content, publish it correctly, regularly, add tags, and so on.  

Why so long? 

It’s hard to say because nobody knows Google algorithms. They crawl your content and backlinks. They watch how people interact with your content, etc. It takes time. 

But it is impossible to 100% predict the result. All you can do is choose a reliable SEO agency, follow Google recommendations, and hope for the best.

9. Paid Ads Are 100% Ranking Boost 

There is a typical case when a business optimizes a landing page for a specific list of keywords. Trying to get better organic positions and visitors they launch paid advertising to that landing page. (To me, it looks like a bribery attempt.) 

The expected result is 1st - great conversions, 2nd - better SERP positions.

The reality:

No matter how much money you’ve invested in pay-per-click advertising, it doesn’t impact organic traffic. Conversions? Yes. Positions? No.

As mentioned in the previous part, SEO isn’t about instant results. It is a long game with no magic pill that will boost the algorithms’ workflow. 

And finally, comparing the ROI of the paid ads and organic ranking, the last one works much better.

10. Meta Description Is a Ranking Factor

We bet you stopped here because of the cute corgi, just as Google pays attention to the brief announcement of the content on your page you put under the description meta tag. 

This is what it looks like

Since Google search engine highlights it under your page title in SERP, it is a powerful conversion and ranking factor:

Image source.

The reality:

Conversion? Yes. A good-written description catches people attention and drives clicks.

Ranking? No.

Sometimes, Google doesn’t show the meta descriptions if they are irrelevant to the page content or search query. Instead, they show another part of your page copy.

Pro tip: To keep meta description relevant and high-converting, we advise keeping it under 105 characters (not words), starting with a target keyword, and adding a clear CTA.

11. The Older Your Domain, The Better Your Ranking

The idea is the following: websites that have a long ranking history have better positions, and new domains are much lower in SERP. That’s why domain age can be one of the ranking factors.

The reality:

It is just about how good you’re doing SEO, but not a domain age. The positions of websites with older domains are better because they have more experience in this game and more time to do everything right and get backlinks.

A six-month website just doesn’t have a chance to compete with these guys at the moment.

Google agrees with that. Here is what John Mueller said about this common misconception in 2019: “Domain age helps nothing.”

Thus, not the domain age but experience and the amount of SEO jobs done is the determining factor. 

Conclusion

Now you know the truth about the 11 most popular SEO myths. Indeed, there are much more on the web, so you should be able to detect them. 

How? When you are unsure whether the SEO statement is true, these questions will help: 

• What is the source of the information? Is it trustworthy? 
• Is this information relevant to the latest search engine updates?
• What about the data: is this a causation or just correlation?
• What’s Google’s opinion on that idea? Is there relevant information on its YouTube, Blog, or X account?

It is always better to double-check the information you get.

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