3 Common Misconceptions in SEO
Stop thinking this way!!!
SEO is an ever-changing beast. There are thing that some SEO’s still focus on too much that are no longer that relevant, and what some SEO’s are feeding their clients that is utterly untrue. SEO’s and clients’ has many common misconceptions and have had them for many years now. I want to start the year off by clearing these up.
Page Rank
To this day I still see, and get, questions about raising Google PageRank and it erks me. So in 2016 I’m going to clearly say PageRank is no longer a major ranking factor!
Page rank was developed by one of the Founders of Google, Larry Page, and was a way of measuring the importance of web pages. PageRanks algorithm worked by counting the number and the quality of the links to a given page and determined a rough estimate of how important that website is. Basically the more links you had to your site, the better your PageRank. This was Google first algorithm and it’s the best known.
As of October 15, 2009… that’s right 2009 a Google employee confirmed they removed PageRank from Google Webmaster Tools. The reason being, too many people relying on that single metric for ranking.
Domain Authority (DA)
Like PageRank I see and get asked questions about raising domain authority. I always rebuttal with the question “Why?”. There is a common misconception that DA correlates with how well your website ranks in the search engine result pages (SERPS). This is quite simply untrue. DA was developed by the good people of Moz many moons ago. They are not associated with Google, do not have Google’s algorithms, and do not influence Google’s ranking factors.
Here is more info on Domain Authority. Moz defines Domain Authority as this:
“Domain Authority is Moz’s calculated metric for how well a given domain is likely to rank in Google’s search results. It is based on data from the Mozscape web index and includes link counts, MozRank and MozTrust scores, and dozens of other factors. It uses a machine learning model to predictive find an algorithm that best correlates with rankings across thousands of search results that we predict against.”
Tons of Traffic equals Tons of Sales/Conversions
This subject is up for debate by some, but I believe it is a common misconception. I’m an analogy kind of guy so I’ll use one here, “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while”. What this means is that if you are ineffective or misguided, you can sometimes be correct by being lucky. If you’re getting 1000 website visits per day (which is pretty decent) and only getting 3 conversions or sales then you’re not doing too well even though your traffic is good, but people still insist at that point they need more traffic to increase sales. I would rather have 100 visits per day and have 25 conversions but that’s just me. This means I know what I’m doing is working.
Conversions are not only about the amount of traffic you’re getting to your site but the quality of your content or your call to actions. Yes, getting 1000 visitors to your site is fantastic but if they’re not converting, then it’s pointless. Focus on quality traffic, not quantity, and once you have the quality increasing your quantity will be much more prosperous.