Remington Begg
The air is getting cooler and children are picking out their costumes, hungry for loads of sugary snacks. This time of year always brings about cringeworthy ghost stories, frightening the young and old alike. Did you hear the scary story about the small business that paid a guy who guaranteed to get them to rank first in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs), only to have him develop sketchy backlinking campaigns from foreign link farms? (Insert “oooh”s and “ahh”s here) It caused them to receive a Google Penalty! Truly terrifying stuff! There’s a lot of chilling SEO advice out there that scares us all year round.
Have you heard any of these?
“Social media doesn’t matter”
Talk about scary-old advice! Not only does social media matter, it matters big time. Successful social activity puts your content in front of the right users at the right time, increasing visits, engagement, and brand signals. The natural act of more influencers visiting your content can lead to more links and further sharing, and the cycle repeats itself. All of these secondary effects can significantly boost your SEO efforts. If people are linking to your content on their social media profiles, Google definitely cares.
“SEO is all tricks”
"Tricks" is what professionals call bad, manipulative SEO that gets you penalized. If the only thing you know about SEO is something like "put more keywords in the title tag”, then yes- it sounds like a lot of tricks. Real SEO, a vital part of the inbound marketing methodology, makes every part of content organization and the browsing experience better for the website viewer. There’s no quick fix or “trick” to creating remarkable content for your potential customers and allowing them to find it organically.
“Google Hates SEO”
Let’s get one thing straight, Google doesn’t penalize good SEO tactics. While Google does seem to encourage optimization, it almost certainly hates manipulative SEO. This is the type of SEO meant to trick search engines into believing false popularity and relevancy signals in order to rank content higher. Google readily states that SEO can "potentially improve your site and save time" and that many SEO agencies "provide useful services." Google even advises "If you're thinking about... SEO, the earlier the better." We agree, Google!
“We finished SEO”
Um, what? SEO isn’t a one-and-done thing, it’s continually evolving and adapting. It’s hair-raising to see effort go to waste and organic search traffic fall over time, but all too often that's exactly what happens when no one is keeping up. Continually maintaining your SEO efforts is essential because of:
- Link degradation
- Evolving search engine algorithms
- The competition moving ahead of you
- Outdated content
Why waste the time and money on optimizing your site if you’re going to let its rankings fall and go untouched afterward?
What SEO ghost story scares you the most? Tell us in the comments! In the meantime, download our free eBook Modern SEO and make sure you aren’t the one terrifying people with your old-fashioned SEO tales.
