Misconceptions for SEO in 2019

Organic search and the criteria by which we establish our optimisation techniques has continuously changed over the years in order for engines to provide search users with better results. The changes are also in place to avoid all the underhanded techniques that have been adopted in attempts to rank higher without merit to succeeding – such as link spamming and keyword stuffing.

Fast forward to 2019 and the SEO rulebook bar a few core values, has completely changed from where it was 10 years ago. Through this seemingly endless list of amendments (which has been mostly led by Google) there has been both new editions which have been misinterpreted and old techniques which no longer stand trial in the highly competitive world of modern SEO(. Here’s just a few of the myths or misconceptions you might want to consider:

Site Safety Certificates Are Only for the User

This simply couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Google itself released information in 2016 stating that sites without HTTPS (a SSL certificate) could be viewed as untrustworthy and therefore suffer in the rankings.

It’s also a statistical fact that a high percentage of internet users will not progress through or spend time on a website without a security certificate. In turn this would lessen the amount of page views and time on site and increase bounce rate. All factors which would contribute to a search engine’s overall trust and quality assurance measure of a website being downgraded. There is an additional hit too in the form of a poor Google Ads quality score.

Meta Descriptions Boost SEO The Same Way as Content

This one is a little tricky. Google and other engines have stated that their algorithms have changed from initial coding which recognised meta tags and meta descriptions as being valuable for demonstrating keyword use. This was changed ultimately because it was possible for the SEO savvy to create tags and descriptions which were misleadingly SEO friendly even if the page content of a site itself didn’t have enough relevancy to a user’s search query.

If you’re still following, the amended approach is that while these aspects may not boost SERPs from a direct algorithm perspective in the way they did in the past, they do still have an impact.

Meta descriptions are used to form the ‘snippets’ which ultimately provide the user with their initial view of your site within the rankings. The reason this is significant is that a well written snippet is likely to increase click through rate on your ranking. While the meta data won’t have impacted the engine’s ranking decision, the click through rate of your site versus others within the ranking will most certainly influence how a search engine views your domain.

Quantity Trumps Quality

We have the rise of the blogger generation to thank for this next myth. The notion that having an obscene quantity of content will trump the need to remain focused on quality and on page SEO initiatives is simply not true, popular as this myth may be. While it is absolutely crucial that any website should be continuously updating and adding new content on a regular and ongoing basis, this is not an excuse to neglect quality and on-site SEO best practise.

Blogs and other content heavy areas of your website need to be considered, planned and certainly always geared towards your overall SEO objectives. Of course, if you can produce multiple blogs per day that’s great, providing you have enough inspiration and unique content to genuinely entertain and serve your audience.

But this does not mean that your attention can slip from maintaining an SEO focus to what you are publishing. Ensuring your greater keyword strategy is being utilised and that your pages have correct layouts including headers and meta data is still of vital importance if you want your content creation to positively impact your rankings. Our advice would be to plan your content in advance to ensure it’s not a wasted effort.

For more tip and hints on website design and SEO , feel free to get in touch with us at Digital Inspired.