There’s a lot of misinformation floating around the search engine optimization (SEO) sector. Perhaps it’s because SEO scammers directly benefit from this lack of understanding. Or perhaps it’s simply an inevitable characteristic of any long-running industry. 

Either way, there are a few myths that seem to persist more stubbornly than others—today, we’re going to address three of the biggest myths currently plaguing SEO.  

More is Better

Our first is technically a twofer.

A lot of SEO novices develop something of an obsession with quantity. More backlinks. More keywords. Bigger numbers. 

A lot of people forget that search engine optimization isn’t simply a matter of finding the right keywords and selecting the right topics. It’s about more than meta descriptions and site content.  User experience is every bit as crucial to creating an effective site. 

Because if your site doesn’t perform properly—if it’s not fast, intuitive, and easy to navigate—then none of the other stuff matters. People aren’t going to stick around to see your compelling content. They’re going to leave and likely end up navigating straight to one of your competitors.

When someone mentions search engine optimization (SEO), what’s the first thing you think about? Chances are good that if you’re like most people, it’s Google — or rather, its parent company, Alphabet. That’s not surprising.

While Google certainly didn’t invent the search engine market, it has, for more than a decade, defined it. Half of SEO amounts to trying to figure out what Google’s algorithms are doing, and what sort of content they want.  Other search engines rarely, if ever, even enter into the equation.

And if they do, they’re almost always playing second string to Google.

Some people can turn creativity on and off like a faucet, accessing an endless well of inspiration and imagination with ease. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t at least a little jealous. See, for most of us, creativity tends to be a fickle, fleeting thing, coming and going more or less as it pleases.

Most often, this manifests as a lack of inspiration in the brainstorming phase, the inability to come up with compelling content even in spite of knowing what your readers are interested in. The bad news is that there’s no way to avoid this kind of thing entirely. The good news is that if you know where to look, you can overcome this roadblock when it surfaces.

Small boxes of text that appear at the top of the search engine results page, featured snippets are an effort by Google to provide users with a clear, concise answer to their questions – one that doesn’t require them to click through to the result.

On the surface, that may seem a bit counterproductive. After all, isn’t getting people to access your website the whole reason for doing search engine optimization? If someone doesn’t even click on your site, how does having a featured snippet help you? 

In a few ways.

First, featured snippets appear in what’s known as position zero on the SERP.  They always precede the first link on the page, meaning they’re the first thing a user sees. This goes an incredibly long way towards building brand recognition.

Infinite scroll and search engine optimization don’t play nice together. Given that infinitely-scrolling websites aren’t exactly a new thing on the web, that’s something we’ve known for at least a decade. The problem, as noted by search engine marketing expert Moz, is that many sites implement infinite scrolling via JavaScript, which Google can’t really crawl effectively. 

No tracking, targeted advertising, or personal profiling. No search history, and no sharing of user data with advertisers. Unbiased results, untainted by sponsored entries. Encryption and timed expiration. The ability for a business to integrate the software into its own products. 

A lot of people look at search engine optimization (SEO) as some sort of holy grail. They operate on the mistaken belief that if they can only master the sacred art of SEO, their website will shoot to the top of the search engine results page. To be blunt, this is false.