Antiquated SEO Concepts
We noticed there are a ton of SEO misconceptions out there, and people are talking about them regularly, but many are related to content marketing or online marketing overall. We're not covering all misconceptions, but those concepts that seem to be stuck to the idea of SEO and will not let go. Then we'll give you resources to help educate the people that believe these misconceptions and alternate solutions to give them.
- Putting text behind an image
The inspiration. The client is struggling with balancing revenue and content on the page. There is a large image on the page now and we suggested editing the page to add content about the product. The question was asked if we could just put the content behind the image and solve both problems.
- Copying a competitor's actions
This isn't as obvious as hiding text, but it's something that companies refuse to stop doing. It's the concept that if a competitor is doing something, it must be worth doing. This goes for competitors ranking above a business, but it also covers competitors that the business just dislikes. We all have those competitors we want to "beat" and sometimes that makes us do things that are not fully researched and planned.
- Sheer number of links equals ranking
This has been debunked so many times it makes my head swim. That doesn't change how many people still think that the total number of links (as reported by a third party tool like Moz, Majestic, or AHREFs) is the sole factor in ranking. Want to do better in SERPs? Well, we need to hire someone to build us some links! I'm going to leave one screen shot here (Search: "insurance") and then we'll get into resources and solutions for when you have to face this.
- A loss in traffic means you've been penalized
The media gets involved with SEO when there is a penalty and so that is what most people hear about. FTD and Overstock types of situations. Then disaster strikes and revenue falls unexpectedly. After some digging, they find that website traffic is down. This paired with emails business owners get at least once a quarter (in a good year) from fly by night SEO companies telling them they can help with SEO, promise the moon and warn of penalties.
The only logical conclusion is a penalty! We have all seen it and most reputable agencies pipelines are filled with leads from companies in this exact situation. The thing is that we never know if there is a penalty unless we dive into the situation, but we have seen times where there is no penalty.
- Duplicate content can incur a penalty
Most clients assume that having duplicate content will incur the "search engine gods' " wrath, and that just isn't true (for the most part; we mean, if your whole site is a copy of someone else's site ...). Duplicate content is a hindrance to site performance most of the time, but most likely not the cause for a substantial drop in traffic and definitely not a penalty from the search engines.
- A call to educate
We sometimes live in a bubble where we think people know everything we do and take for granted information like everything above. If someone asked you how to create a P&L Statement, could you? Maybe, maybe not, but you get what I mean. Take the time to answer questions, whether from clients or colleagues if you are in-house. You would be amazed how much more YOU can learn from teaching others.
Courtesy & Copyright
https://creativesaints.com/
http://graphicwebdesign.in/
https://www.papeel.com.br/
https://moz.com/blog?page=69
https://moz.com/blog/seo-concepts-people-still-think-are-reality
https://moz.com/blog?page=92
https://moz.com/blog?page=100
https://moz.com/blog?page=59