You have heard of many seo myths. The most of the SEO promises that you’ll hear would be entirely a seo myth. And following a SEO myth can lead your website to ashes.

The problem is we don’t know exactly how search engine works, so we learn a lot from hit-and-trial method. So you must be very careful and do not rely on only one method. Before all that first understand what is seo and why is it important?

What is SEO / SEO meaning

SEO (Search engine optimization) is the science to help people get more traffic to their websites and rank higher in search results in search engines as Google.

You’ll find a lot of people advising you about SEO myths and facts. But how much of that is true? And what are the dangers of SEO myths?

Some of the common and biggest SEO myths are discussed further.

Seo Myths and Facts That You Should Prevent Your Site From

SEO Myth #1 The Sandbox

The idea of the sandbox was that search engines like Google supress or hold back new websites for some time to understand until the site is ready to rank more freely.

It’s been a debate for years on it and still going.

The only talk that have been done by Google is through their tweets. As they have said not to beleive it.

Now, officially it has been told as a myth. But unofficially, SEOs still believe that Google actually does the sandbox thing to new websites for some time while it tries to understand them more.

SEO Myth #2 Plagiarism Means Death?

This is a SEO misconception that you’ll always hear throughout the SEO industry. The idea is teht if you copy contenr from   a site and publish it the same, your site would be penalize and would be supressed.

The truth behind it is that it works in two ways :- Algorithmic Suppression and Manual Action.

Manual action is taken by a human at Google, which can result in removing the page from site. If this happens Google would notify you in your Google search console.

But in algorithmic supression, you never get penalised by search engine, all it does is, it scans both sites and read the same content then the older one would more ranking in organic result, means you can’t overrank the original page but you site won’t get penalised for that.

SEO Myth #3 Does PPC Advertising Boosts Ranking?

Another common SEO myth. The idea of it was that Google will favor the websites in organic ranking which are giving money to him for pay-per-click advertising. This is entirely wrong.

The algorithm which determines organic result page is entirely different to the one of determining PPC as results.

However, running a paid ad while working through on SEO might help the site in other ways but not directly into the organic results.

SEO Myth #4 Domain Age Matters?

This SEO myth is quite settled and confusing then others. As a site which is older and have been performed good should have had an uphand in organic search results.

But Google denied it completely. Also, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst named John Mueller answered to a question on Twitter saying “No, domain age helps nothing”.

SEO Myth #5 Does Google Analytics tells Google to rank you?

This is seen often in people as they think that high bounce rate or low time on page would supress their sites on google. Which is a clear myth.

Even Google’s Gary Illyes has rejected this idea simply with, “We don’t use *anything* from Google analytics in the “algorithm.” As ‘low time on page’ won’t actually means that your site is bad, it can also mean that your content is short and easily digestible.

You don’t have to worry about Google Analytics data. The data is to give you a possible reason of ‘why aren’t you ranking wel’l, they are not the cause of it.

SEO Myth #6 Domain Authority matters?

This is another SEO misconception which comes from the past methods of Google.

Back some years, Google was used to use Pagerank which was a link analysis algorithm used to measure the importance (ranking power) of a webpage. Google do not use it anymore.

But some others providers had came up to show your website’s importance.

Here lies the confusion. People are still using these providers to measure the ranking power of their sites. Whereas Google has denied every talk on that. Gary Illyes again rejected the myth by saying “we don’t really have “overall domain authority”.

Useful Content: How to increase domain authority

SEO Myth #7 More words means Higher rank?

It is much believed that longer content is higher ranked and more useful. It is one of the biggest myths in SEOs.

A lot of studies occuring on search engine results have stated that the average word length in the top 10 of google search results have over 1,450 words. This is enough to convince anyone that larger contents have a better chance.

But as it is stated by Google that only because the average words in the top 10 contents are high, doesn’t mean that only longer content can rank. Length of content is not a criteria of ranking.

SEO Myth #8 SEO needs 3 months before showing effects?

It’s very much useful to tell your boss or your customer. But it ain’t that accurate. Some changes can time to show effect and some can be seen in mere days. As SEO is not an accurate science, you cannot apply and expect it to work, you have to do hit-and-trial and for that it can take time.

Average life of the content in the top 10 results is around 650 days, which mean that fresh content find it harder to make place in top results.

But saying that it will show effect in exact 3 months makes no sense. SEO can show it’s effect in two days or it can even take a 1000 days to rank your site.

SEO Myth #9 Bounce Rate is an issue?

Bounce rate is the percentage of the users that came on your website and resulted in no interaction and leaved in no time.

It is believed that bounce rate is a measure of quality as the user will only stay if they love the content. But it’s not done on that, there are a many factors because of which bounce rate could also increase.

So counting on it as a measure of quality ain’t right and John Mueller had also cleared up by denying it.

SEO Myth #10 Are Backlinks the most needy thing in SEO?

Backlinks are important, there’s no debate on that, but the question is how important?

Many SEO companies believe that backlinks are the most important SEO factor and that do focus all on that.

By that’s not the whole picture, backlinks are important but they wouldn’t be the cause of making your website in top results.

As Google’s John Mueller told, “links are definitely not the most important SEO factor.”

It is important but the content and usability are still kings in the game.

SEO Myth #11 Keyword in URLs

Filling your URLs with keywords may sound very helpful but unfortunately, it’s not.

John Mueller has told that putting keywords in URL are a very minor help.

So, if you’re thinking of editing your URL to put keywords, think again, it might not worth it.

SEO Myth #12 Website Migration means Only Redirects

Putting redirect during website migration are not the only thing to care about. If you are bit confused about which redirection is good check 301 Redirect vs 302 Redirect to make a clear thought process for your website.

There are a many more aspects which helps to maintain the quality of site during migration which includes maintaining tracking, ensuring the bots can still access the right page and keeping the targeting content same.

SEO Myth #13 Is Fame a factor?

It is obvious to think that big brands get higher rankings than the new ones, as they can invest more in SEO and get more in results.

But do Google favor them by giving them the hype based on their fame? Asked to Google, it denies completely.

Google said the rankings depends on the quality, no matter if the name of company is big or not.

So, if done the things properly, small brands can still stand out.

SEO Myth #14 Can XML Sitemap Boost search ranking?

Google XML Sitemaps generator, generates a sitemap instantly as you publish your post, if you have it installed in your wordpress. The good thing is the instantly generated sitemap can be found by Google easily. But it does not guarantee to boost your search rankings. If you don’t have an idea how to add sitemap in blogger check this blog for setting it up.

As a tip, you should install Google XML Sitemaps generator in your wordpress, it will help Google discover your content faster but it do not guarantee you to improve your search rankings.

SEO Myth #15 Meta Tags !!!!!!

Many people think meta tags do not work anymore, others would tell you that meta tags are one of the most important thing. Which is true?

Both, to an extent. Google do not use meta tags in page rankings, but it is helpful, as it makes your snippet looks good and audience can see if you’ve the thing they are asking for or not.

So, meta tags are a-go-for thing, as they can help you, one way or another.

SEO Myth #16 SEO = Rankings?