SEO is tough. There are no shortcuts or quick fixes to ranking your website. And anyone who claims to have found an easy way out or “cracked the code” is definitely lying. Keeping up with the latest SEO rules, tactics, guidelines, and variables that boosts the ranking of a site is a difficult task. There are more uncertainties than certainties as far as SEO is involved. 

Consequently, there’s more room for trials and evaluation, which also opens the door for misinformation and misconceptions. Here are seven SEO myths that will probably hurt the ability of your site to rank in organic search in 2021.

1. You Need to Submit Your Site to Google to Rank 

The notion that you must submit your site to Google to rank is a myth. Google uses bots called web crawlers to locate and index content on its own. But if you’re revamping your current website pages or building new ones, you can make your content easy to find by submitting an updated sitemap of your site to Google.

This was the first and central myth because many people give up and get the impression that optimization no longer creates opportunities for promoting high-quality sites. Still, on the contrary, it cuts them down.

2. Quantity of Links is more Crucial than Quality 

A few years ago, all you needed for your site to rank higher was to build as many links as possible. The quantity of links was more important than quality. But today, the focus has shifted from quantity to quality. Keep in mind that a link to another site is more like a recommendation or a vote of confidence. So you need to build it the right way and focus on its quality.

For a long time, marketers worldwide have argued that all you need for good SEO performance is the quality of backlinks. As long as you are linked to reputable sites, you don’t have to worry about the link count. By default, your project will grow and develop.

3. Meta Keywords are a Crucial Ranking Factor 

In the past, meta keyword tags were an important ranking factor. Most site owners used long lists of keywords as a strategy for enhancing the ranking of their sites. The SEO process, then, was characterized by stuffing virtually any or every blend of a keyword. Due to the abuse of this meta tag, Google rendered meta keyword tags useless.

The point is, neither Google nor Bing uses meta keywords at all. Yahoo and other search engines at least index them, so they count a little, but their weight in the ranking algorithms is very low.

4. Duplicate Content is Acceptable 

Duplicating or copying content was a popular SEO strategy for some individuals in the early 2000s. This strategy enabled the lazy or uncreative to increase how frequently keywords appeared on their sites. But upon the introduction of the Panda algorithm update, Google now focuses on getting rid of websites that duplicate or copy content.

Failure to create unique content will keep your website from ranking highly – or ranking at all – on search engines. Concentrate on showing your proficiency and what makes you stand out from the crowd by consistently creating quality content.

By the way, duplication of content on different pages of the site can get into the search results of a completely different page relevant to the promoted query. As a result, users who come to it can significantly spoil the behavioral factors, which will undoubtedly not have a perfect effect on the website’s ranking.

5. SEO is a One-Time Task

One of the most terrible myths is that SEO is a one-time thing – something you do one day and you’re done. This myth is common among SMB business owners who are aware that they need SEO but aren’t willing to spend the time and resources required for its continual development. 

SEO is a continuous process. You need to constantly use the latest SEO trends, tactics, and strategies to boost your Google rankings and stay ahead of your competitors. Continuous SEO requires both a proactive and reactive approach. High-quality optimization protects your website against key algorithm updates, while continuous optimization maintains it at the top of search engine rankings when old practices stop working.

For a more superior SEO experience, partner with an SEO consultant that offers unparalleled services that help businesses rank and perform better in search results. The main thing to remember is that no website can be said to be perfect in terms of SEO. It’s crucial to refine, change, and improve. Search engines are developing their algorithms, and web admins need to keep up with new requirements. You should do SEO monitoring with the help of residential proxies (Geonode is a helpful resource for this) since they enable geo-targeting, and as such, you can do test search queries from no matter which country. This helps you scrape the web without any misleading information. Therefore, conducting an SEO audit before optimizing internally is necessary. It will identify weaknesses and problems so you can understand the scope of the tasks ahead. 

6. Page Speed Isn’t Important 

Google announced in 2010 that page speed is a critical ranking factor. Besides hurting your Google ranking, a page that takes ages to load will drive visitors to your competitors. It could also lower your chances of retaining your current users. So be sure to take your time to boost your page loading speed. That way, you’ll increase your odds of attracting new users and keeping existing ones for long.

Speed is one of the thousands of factors that can influence a website’s ranking. The most important conclusion: if there are refusals in the metric, it is necessary to optimize the site load speed. And chasing beautiful numbers is precisely the same as saying: make me a beautiful site.

7. Having More Pages Boost SEO 

The idea that more pages translate to more traffic to your website is a myth. The reality is that Google, together with other top search engines, is more intelligent these days and focuses more on quality than quantity. So rather than setting up random pages, dedicate your efforts toward creating useful, informational content, boosting your page SEO, and adding quality backlinks.

Google spokesman John Mueller said that there is no direct link between the number of pages on a site and its ranking in search results. Again, you need to understand that more pages mean more content, articles, more internal links, and other valuable elements for optimization. That is, it makes no sense to artificially increase the number of pages just for the sake of ranking, but there is an increase in the amount of helpful content.

The Parting Shot

Quality is an important aspect of a successful SEO process. Ensure you have quality links, quality content, quality keywords, and quality pages. Most importantly, understand that SEO is an ongoing process that requires both proactive and reactive strategies.