Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a marketing method that aims to build visibility by improving rankings, traffic and increase awareness in search engines. A site that is search engine friendly is crucial for any business that wants to widen their reach in the online world.
There’s more than enough opportunities on the internet, so much so that it only makes sense to utilize SEO to make a business flourish. If you’re new to SEO and your idea of it doesn’t go beyond “Google”, isn’t it time you get a comprehensive view about some of the most common misconceptions surrounding the process?
- Images and videos have no SEO
- Website appearance is meaningless
- The search engines are out to punish your site
- Keyword stuffing
- Paid search helps bolster organic results
Google’s search engine crawlers may not be able to evaluate a photo or a video as easy as it does with text but it doesn’t mean that they don’t matter. Visual content is a very powerful tool that you can and should leverage into your SEO campaign. People love to engage with visual content, and the more engaging the content, the more likely it is that Google will reward you.
User-experience is now a big factor for ranking in search engines. A site that doesn’t provide value to users, is difficult to navigate, and takes too long to load doesn’t stand a chance at ranking high in search engine results. This is why it’s important for designers and SEO specialists need to make sure a site is friendly to both bots and humans.
Big search engines like Google regularly release updates that may cause some sites to go down in search results. This isn’t because Google is some big villain out to take everyone that it doesn’t like. If your site was affected or penalized, after an update, it’s probably because it didn’t meet the new metrics that Google’s algorithm demands from websites.
Keyword stuffing use to work in the early days of SEO but as the industry gets older, search engines are becoming more complex and smarter too. They are now able to read into the context that surrounds the keyword. If it catches too many instances of your site repetitively using keywords where it doesn’t read natural to human users anymore, you may get penalized. These days, long tail keywords are more important and can help bring you closer to your purchase-ready customer.
There is no such thing as a relationship between paid search and organic results. Big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo maintain this separation so know that whatever organic results you may get, it has no direct correlation to paid ads at all. If you want to earn organic traffic, you need to ensure that your site is SEO-friendly, and that you consistently produce quality content across different channels like social media, reputable blogs, and more.
For some people, SEO can be too foreign of a topic to understand and in many cases, it can even lead to misunderstandings between a business owner and its SEO agency. By taking the time to understand how SEO works and how you can leverage it, you’ll have a better chance of reaching more customers, which in turn, helps maximize profits.
