“Misinformation” is a hot button topic in 2022, in more areas than one. Digital marketing is certainly not the foremost of these, but it isn’t the least, either.
Take SEO, for example, and the businesses that deal in it. Myths abound, and you could get directly contradictory pieces of advice or information from two equally qualified “experts.”
The truth is that even when you hear what Google itself has to say, some of SEO is like throwing darts at the board, seeing which ones stick, and then drawing the most rational conclusions about them.
Even so, there are some relatively easily disprovable “SEO myths.” We asked 1DigitalⓇ Agency’s eCommerce SEO experts what the worst of these were. This is what they had to offer.
1. SEO is something you can do “once’
Time and time again, online businesses raise the concern that they’ve “done SEO in the past,” citing it as a reason they don’t want to invest in it again.
It’s not the best analogy, but SEO is like washing your clothes. You don’t do that once, right? You need to do it periodically to keep them clean. Plus, SEO is always changing. No matter how “clean” your clothes were after the first wash, they’re going to get dirty again.
Poor metaphorical representation aside, SEO is something that you need to invest in over time in order to steadily improve organic rankings. What you did 5 years ago may be irrelevant now anyway.
2. Keyword density improves page ranking
This is a myth with an asterisk. Keyword presence can and does improve page rankings, especially when the keyword appears in header titles or metadata. But too much of a good thing can often be a bad thing, and this is one of those cases.
Back in the day, eCommerce SEO “experts” would just pepper a page with meaningless instances of keywords. Today, Google’s algorithms are learning to interpret keywords in context, making this practice pointless. The use of a keyword has to make sense, as per the preliminary keyword research.
More disturbingly, Google is learning to recognize the overuse of a keyword on a page. This is called keyword stuffing and it can and does adversely affect page rankings.
3. Google only cares about “new” content on eCommerce sites
Freshness can affect ranking factor, but only when the nature of the content is dependent on its age. For example, “news” is a keyword that is affected by age. People don’t want “yesterday’s news,” all puns aside. Search engines take note in this case.
But if the subject matter is something that never changes, like “how to fold a sheet,” then “may the best content win,” one day old or ten years.
4. Mobile optimization doesn’t matter for online stores
Mobile-firest indexing is no longer new, but it absolutely does matter. When it started and some sites used certain features to hide sections from mobile displays, their rankings took a turn for the worse.
Even if that wasn’t the case, why would you want to give the short end of the deal to a segment of the market that will soon account for over half of your shoppers if it doesn’t already?
5. Buying links is an effective link-building technique
The best backlinks are those that are earned organically. Almost anyone selling them will be posting them on low-domain authority websites. The links that come from these are considered “spammy” or “toxic” and can actually hurt your rankings – let alone help them.
There are a few exceptions to this rule but beware. Link-buying may have been an effective technique for eCommerce businesses at one point, but it no longer works.
Learn More from the eCommerce SEO Experts
There are many SEO myths out there and eCommerce SEO experts don’t even all agree on which are true and which are not.
But here’s something you can trust – results that arise from optimizing your site.
Since 2012, 1DigitalⓇ Agency has been generating higher long-term organic traffic and rankings for its SEO clients (which span many industries on many eCommerce platforms) which correspond to higher conversion rates and sales.
Sometimes what you need is results, and 1DigitalⓇ Agency’s eCommerce SEO services can deliver them. Visit their website, 1DigitalAgency.com today, to learn more, or contact them at 888-982-8269.
