21 SEO Myths You Should Forget in 2024
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SEO myths you should forget
Even today, many SEO myths persist, even though they have long since been denied by Google or refuted by case studies. We will explain which SEO myths you can safely ignore and which you should definitely stay away from.
Why are some SEO myths so persistent?
First, we should clarify why some SEO myths still exist even after 10 years and the practices are still used. The problem is that Google, unlike other search engines, is extremely secretive. Especially when it comes to revealing details about the ranking factors . So there is a lot of speculation about it and unfortunate coincidences often lead to causalities that in reality are not causalities.
There are also many so-called “SEO gurus” who believe they know exactly what the Google algorithm prefers and what it takes to rank at number 1. They are often much louder than Google’s documentation and spread their supposed insider knowledge via social media or on their blogs.
In addition, search engine optimization is constantly evolving, just like the Google algorithm. So something that worked well 5 years ago can have the opposite effect today. Therefore, you should always check the current consensus on SEO best practices and not blindly trust any tips.
Myth 1: Google is vindictive
SEO myth number 1 relates to the so-called Google penalties. These are issued by Google for violating the quality guidelines. The consequence is that your individual pages or the entire website are removed from the search index.
If you receive a manual penalty from Google, you will see this in the manual actions report in Google Search Console . If you resolve the issue and request a re-examination, the penalty will be lifted. Your rankings should then recover.
However, this does not mean that your website will immediately return to the same position as before the measure. Rankings change daily and this has nothing to do with Google being vindictive, but rather with the algorithm behind it.
Myth 2: Google sees the website the same way as all other users
What many people, including you, may not be aware of is that the Google crawler does not see your website with the same eyes as a real user. This is because the Google bot only reads the rendered version of your website. It also does not perform any actions or click on buttons, for example. It only follows links that are embedded in an a tag.
That’s why it’s so important to check that all important content on your website that should be indexed is also readable in the rendered version. You can take a closer look at the rendered version of a page using the URL inspection tool in the Google Search Console or in the Chrome DevTools under the Elements tab.
Myth 3: Duplicate content is penalized by Google
It is often said that duplicate content is severely penalized by Google. But that is not true. If Google detects duplicate content on your website, for example, it will not index it at all.
You can also easily see this in the Google Search Console. Under index coverage you can see why individual landing pages were not indexed. If you have a lot of pages that appear under “Duplicate – not set as canonical by the user”, Google has identified duplicate content here.
For some, this may still be a punishment for their hard work, but it cannot be compared to manual measures.
Myth 4: The age of the domain helps with rankings
Some still believe that the age of a domain has a positive effect on a website’s rankings, although Google has been denying this for several years.
Myth 5: I have to submit my website to Google
Submitting your website to Google is not a prerequisite for it to be included in the Google index. This is because Google crawlers are constantly looking for new content and will find it even without you submitting it.
However, if you make a lot of changes to your site’s content, resubmitting your sitemap to Google Search Console or re-requesting indexing for individual pages can help Google crawl your new content faster than waiting for the bot to find it.
Myth 6: Google considers the canonical URL for indexing
Most of the time this is true, but not always. For some URLs, Google chooses a different canonical URL than the one manually determined. In such cases, you will find the following reason “Duplicate – Google determined a different page than the user as the canonical page” in the index coverage in Google Search Console.
This means that Google does not consider this page to be an original page, but classifies it as a duplicate. Therefore, Google decides not to index the page. So you should check the content of these pages again.
Myth 7: Google Ads help with organic rankings
It is often claimed that PPC ads also influence organic rankings. However, this is simply wrong. The algorithm for organic search and the one for displaying ads are different and not related.
Although the combination of running Google Ads and SEO campaigns can have a generally positive impact on your website, it has no direct impact on your rankings.
Myth 8: You only need traffic from Google
Traffic from Google is important, no question. However, you won’t get enough traffic if you don’t also generate traffic from other external websites. Why? Every page that links to yours is proof that your content is valuable.
This in turn has a positive effect on the rankings for your website and also leads to more traffic from Google. That’s why it’s important to have traffic from other websites besides Google search.
Therefore, you should invest in your content and make sure it is worth linking to. For more tips on content creation, check out our related blog post .
Myth 9: Keywords are more important than anything else
Keywords are undoubtedly still important for Google to understand what your website is about. However, they are not nearly as important as they once were. Often, a separate page was created for every possible keyword, even though they had the same meaning. This is because the algorithm did not yet understand semantic connections.
Today, however, things are completely different, especially since search queries are becoming more and more conversation-oriented. Google has therefore adapted its algorithm with several updates. As a result, it is no longer about dealing with individual keywords, but rather about dealing with topics.
Myth 11: The more pages, the better
Many people believe that more pages always lead to more traffic. But in this case, more is not always better. What is more important is that the existing content is really good and meets the search intent.
This is especially important so that traffic converts and doesn’t just remain one-time visits. It is therefore better to produce a little really good content than a lot of bad content.
Myth 12: Images do not need to be optimized
You should definitely not do without image optimization. There are several components of image optimization that can have a major impact on your website’s rankings. Google is placing increasing importance on websites making their content available quickly.
Page speed or Core Web Vitals are becoming increasingly important and it is often images that slow down the loading process of your page. Especially if the images have been uploaded in the wrong size, they still have to be compressed by the browser. This is exactly what costs you valuable loading time. It is easy to use free tools to compress your own images without any loss of quality.
If you want your images to be found via Google Image Search, you can also provide an image sitemap. This gives the crawler more information about your images and may result in images being crawled that the bot would not have previously found.
Marking up images with semantic HTML also helps the Google bot to process your images better, since CSS images cannot be read.
To refresh your knowledge of image optimization, Google only supports images in BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP or SVG format. Google also uses image URL and file names to understand the images.
The alt text is used to describe the image to users who cannot see it. However, the alt text also helps Google to understand what is shown on it. Therefore, it should only be optimized for this purpose.
Myth 13: Videos do not need to be optimized
Far from it, because even the largest video platform, YouTube, is a search engine. Here, too, optimization should definitely not be neglected. The main goals of YouTube are, on the one hand, to make suitable content (in this case videos) available to users based on their search query. On the other hand, to ensure that users remain loyal to the platform in the long term.
Just like with SEO for your website, there are some best practices for optimizing your videos for YouTube. Here are a few elements to consider when optimizing:
Video Title & Description
Categories & Tags
Video Thumbnail
SRT file for subtitles
If you want to learn more about the YouTube search engine, you can find out more in our YouTube Guide .
Myth 14: Keywords with low search volume are not worth it
You should quickly put this SEO myth behind you. Because there is a lot of potential in keywords with low search volume. These are often the keywords that lead to a conversion and attract exactly the right users to your website.
Even keywords that have no search volume in the well-known analysis tools can bring you a lot of traffic. Because the tools are only one part of the analysis. That’s why many SEOs in certain niches focus on keywords with little to no search volume.
