Does your head hurt from all the SEO misconceptions out there? There’s certainly no shortage of them. To help you set things straight, we are about to reveal the truth about four commonly believed SEO “facts”
1. “The more links that lead to your site, the better…”
(TRUE AND FALSE)
Many of us feel that we can’t have too much of a good thing. But when we’re talking about incoming links, that’s not exactly how it works. It’s true that “netlinking” can help build your online reputation, increase your traffic and improve your SEO, but this is only effective if your referral sites are of good quality. If your incoming links come from questionable websites or look like they belong to link farms or link exchanges, Google might penalize and downgrade your site!
Handy Tips
To artificially boost a site’s position on search engines, some people resort to “link farms.” This practice consists of creating websites so that they send traffic to one another. If you try this, Google will penalize you harshly. Don’t be tempted!
2. “Repeating the same word over and over again is good for SEO”
(FALSE)
Though this may have worked a few years ago, these days you won’t improve your website ranking by churning out the same expression on your landing pages or cramming your pages with identical keywords. You might even cause the opposite effect. Google now penalizes the phenomenon of “keyword stuffing” which refers to repeating the same keywords over and over again. So when you create content for your site, write in a natural way that’s meant for humans and not Google’s indexing robots.
3. “Having great SEO will increase sales”
(FALSE)
When your website has excellent SEO, it will have greater visibility and Internet users will therefore be more likely to find it on search engines. But appearing in Google’s top search results doesn’t mean you will automatically increase your sales turnover. To build your sales, it’s not your SEO that counts, but your conversion rate (buyers to visitors ratio)
Handy Tips
- On an e-commerce site, a website’s conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who have made an online purchase.
- This rate depends on factors such as your professional offer (goods/services, prices, etc) and the layout of your site, particularly how easy it is to place orders.
4. “Paid referencing is more effective than natural referencing”
(FALSE)
Unlike natural SEO, which takes time to bear fruit, paid referencing (SEA) has clear but temporary effects. These will only last as long as your Google Ads campaign. Once you stop paying, your ad will disappear from search engines. Rather than see them as competing strategies, it’s best to combine natural SEO (which takes a while to implement but whose results last) with paid referencing (which has very fast but fleeting results).
Key Points to Remember:
- When it comes to links, opt for quality over quantity.
- Your website content needs to be useful and relevant (Don’t repeat the same keyword 40 times!).
- Natural SEO and paid referencing are not mutually exclusive and make for a beneficial combination.
