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Insights Busting the myths of Google's ranking secrets

19 Apr 2022

3 minute read

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Having an amazingly presented website is great, but that won’t make a difference to the business if it isn’t being viewed by their target audience or potential customers.

SEO helps your site to rank higher in the organic search results for keywords and phrases relevant to your business or products and services. Providing you with long-term visibility, it’s important to keep yourself in the loop with all algorithm updates. Google’s search algorithm goes through many changes throughout the year alone, in order to improve and better user experience. With their algorithms not being accessible to the public, there are many popular beliefs around SEO that simply aren’t true.   
 
Although every SEO would love to know every factor that gets your website to rank at the top of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and what makes up Google’s ‘Secret Formula’, we aren’t this lucky. This has led to some misinformation and SEO myths, including the following:

Content is the most important
Yes, it’s true – content is extremely important in the world of SEO. It shouldn’t, however, be the only part of your strategy. This is one great aspect, but don’t focus everything around this. When it comes to content, the important element to keep in mind is that you always want it to be well-written, with the user in mind, and original. Informative content is what will perform best down the line.  
 
The more keywords, the better
Researching and focusing on relevant keywords for your business is something every SEO should be able to do with their eyes closed. Rather than primarily focusing on getting keywords into your content which could lead to keyword stuffing, quality content should be created around the set of keywords. This will allow for natural placement of keywords, without making it look spammy. Incorporating too many keywords into your copy is damaging to the user experience, making your content less reader-friendly.  
 
Sitemaps aren’t important
Your sitemap lists all pages on your website, giving search engines a clear outline of your site’s content. With all pages of your site linked, web crawlers can discover your site easily. This is important for large sites, or sites with isolated content or content that doesn’t link to each other.
 
Duplicate content
This may come as a surprise, but there is no penalty for duplicate content on your own site. When there are two or more versions of a page, the most authoritative version will be chosen and the others will be filtered out.
 
Bold text doesn’t do anything
Bolding text in your content will help your SEO by assisting Google in understanding what message is stronger. Copy that is emphasised or bolded adds extra value by providing a clear sign of what can be found on the page and what the specific topic is.
 
Once your website starts ranking, there’s no need to worry about SEO
One of the most important principles of SEO is to make sure that you keep on top of updates, with new content and updating your website often. Although it may seem like a marathon because there is no way to get your site to rank overnight, there is an end goal in site. Always keep in mind that even though your website may be ranking for relevant keywords today, you never know what tomorrow has in store. As an ongoing process, consistency is key.  

There are many more myths about Google’s ranking secrets, and what you need to do to make it to the top and thrive in front of your target audience. Though you may be trying many different approaches to get your website to rank, always keep in mind that it’s a process and cannot be done overnight. Subscribe to newsletters to keep updated on all things SEO, lean on your agency for their expertise, and to keep yourself in the loop about any algorithm changes.

We hope we helped to bust some myths of Google’s ranking secrets.  

 

 

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