SEO: Fact vs. Fiction

Myth: Link building is old school.

Yes, link building is one of the original SEO strategies from the early days of internet marketing. However, link building hasn’t gone away entirely and probably won’t. When Google determines rankings, it’s based on a number of factors that add up to paint a picture of the quality of the user’s experience on each site. Link building used to be an easily hackable strategy that relied more on who you knew than the quality of the content on the sites being linked to. With all of the sites on the web now, though, link building is more often an accurate indication that the content on a site is worth reading.

Myth: Keywords are the key to SEO.

Once upon a time, keyword density was thought to be the hallmark of good SEO. The more often a keyword appeared on the page, the more the page was thought to be relevant for that term. Nowadays, keywords are a vital aspect of high quality content as part of a broader strategy. Google cares more about the relevance of the content on the page and the user’s overall experience than the density of keywords themselves.

Myth: Optimization is for words, not pictures.

Optimizing all of the images on a page is a quick and easy way to boost the effects of an on-page SEO campaign. Search engines don’t see images that aren’t optimized; the optimization acts as a description of the image for search engines to take note of and consider. A descriptive title, alt text, description, and captions give Google an in-depth idea of what the photo is about and how it enhances the quality of the content on the page.

Myth: The quality of the content will deliver the same results as SEO.

Great quality content and SEO go hand-in-hand; they are neither twins nor enemies. Especially in the context of content marketing, good SEO defines the technical needs that content marketing fulfill. SEO won’t be as effective without good content, but good content will never be able to deliver the same results as a well-developed SEO strategy.