Common Misconceptions About SEO

Tags: #Online Marketing #Search Engine Optimization #SEO

The best place to hide a dead body is page two of the Google Search results.

No wonder every person wants their web page to rank higher in search results. So they do some research and talk to few people and come to conclusion that SEO is what they want. But with this type of knowledge they tend to develop misconceptions. There are many but we have listed 5 most common misconception that people tend to develop about SEO.

1. SEO is all about keywords

Search engines may rely on the keywords to know better about your web site but it is definitely not the last thing. Different factors like how good is your website optimized to view in mobile device, how good is your website performing in social media, how good is your content, how fast your website loads in browser, etc also influences your search ranking. Search engines are becoming smarter day by day, gone are the days when keywords and links could just do the job.

2. Google is the only search engine

Google might be the Biggest fish in the pond but it not certainly the only one. The data shows that about 10% of total searches are from other search engines like yahoo, bing, baidu, DuckDuckGo, etc. If you only focus on Google then you are missing out on good chunk of market.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Search Engine Market Share

Your main focus should be optimizing in Google; no doubt, but with other search engines slowly picking the pace, you might consider optimizing there also. One example, In early 2013, Facebook introduced Graph Search and its partnership with Bing. Graph search enables people to search for places and things within their social reach — for example, “Restaurants in Key West liked by my friends.” But it can’t handle every search. For those it can’t, it defaults to a Bing search.

3. SEO is one time process

The real challenge start once you have achieved good ranking in the search results. It takes active and continuous effort to maintain that good ranking. A monthly review process can be setup to access the current search ranking and make changes accordingly. For example: once you are top of the search result, your competitor will also be making changes to their SEO strategies, so if you don’t do anything then your web page will slowly start to rank lower. and another thing in order to protect themselves from spammers, Google continuously keeps on making changes to their algorithm. So with the change in algorithm your SEO strategies also needs to change.

4. Ranking Is Everything

Most of the people who are up for SEO think that ranking is everything. Even though your page ranks highest in search result, there are still many other factors to consider. Ultimately you should be seeing the benefits. Your ranking still needs to be coupled with other factors such as audience relevance and website traffic to get a sense of ROI.

Consider looking beyond rankings and measure these four metrics of your SEO practices.

Growth of organic search traffic
Growth of organic search traffic per keyword
Growth of conversions from organic search traffic
Growth of conversions from organic search traffic per keyword

5. How much time will it take

The one question that almost every person ask is “How much time will it take”. Well this question is as difficult to answer as answering “How much time will it take to Moon”. Firstly you need to plan your SEO strategy through research and calculation and secondly there are many other external factors which might impact your SEO strategy. So it is very difficult to tell the exact time it will take for Website to rank higher in search results. Like said earlier continuous change in Google’s algorithm, change in your competitors SEO strategies.

SEO is an investment just like a tree that needs effort, patience and time to grow before you can see the result.

Honestly speaking people don’t know exactly how google’s algorithm works. There are certain process which works, basically they try that first and try tinker around.

Here at ads!, before starting SEO on a website we make sure that clients understand the essence of SEO. Basically our clients are free of above mentioned misconception.