News   /   Not all that glitters is gold - 7 lies which 'SEO experts' tell you

With the rise of online marketing and the importance of websites, careers in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) automatically has gone on the rise. However if you are considering of outsourcing the SEO efforts of your company, you need to be careful not to fall for certain misleading taglines which are proper common SEO lies:

1. “I know the algorithms.”
   If anyone tries to make you believe that they know all of the algorithms used by search engines which help in their ranking, run away. Search engines such as Google have never revealed all of the factors which they use to crawl and index websites. Even though in some instances they were quite open about certain changes which they make, the order of the day is that online marketers and website developers needs to have a keen eye in order to discover what affects rankings.
    
2. “I can help any industry rank.”
   A very important aspect to understand in SEO is that the first thing one has to analyse and get to know, is the ultimate target audience of your online effort. This means that an experienced and knowledgeable SEO person needs to not only know what the target audience wants from that particular project, but they must also understand the industry at its core. Without having knowledge of the industry itself, it would be very difficult to build an online campaign around the most important factors.
    
3.  “SEO is all you need.”
   One cannot deny the fact that SEO is a very important factor when it comes to any online effort. However it is not the only factor which one has to take into account, and also it depends on the market in wich you are operating. For instance one has to keep in mind to use tools such as social media marketing, advertising, content marketing, and so much more. As they say, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts and in online marketing it is exactly the case.
    
4. “The more links, the better.”
   Backlinks, links on third party websites which point to your own websites, are still a very important measure when it comes to SEO. However one needs to be careful what type of links are actually linking back to your portal, and how many links are present on the internet. Search engines such as Google give a lot of importance to the quality of the links and how legitimate they are. So if anyone says "the more links, the better", run away!
    
5. “Duplicate content won’t hurt your SEO.”
   Duplicate content is considered by search engines such as Google as being a pretty serious offense, and one which needs to be dealt with as fast as possible. If you are going to work with a marketer who says that duplicate content is not an important thing, well think again. When you are using duplicate content in your various online efforts, search engines are not going to know what your intentions are. For this reason it is very important that if you are going to market a post which you have already published, not to use the same content.
    
6. “I’ll get you on the first page of Google.”
   Have you met with an SEO person who has promised to get you on the first page of search results within a short period of time? Well, we really do not wish to burst any bubbles, but be careful. Linking with the first point of this article, the way page ranking works changes so often that it is almost impossible for anyone to be sure that they will rank in X amount of time. When it comes to these things, it is always best that you go with someone that has experience under their belt, and they can actually use examples of their works.
    
7. “All you need to do is follow Google’s recommendations.”
   Even though Google and any others search engine will give a number of good recommendations, you always need to keep something at the top of your head. Search engines thrive and monetise on advertising. This means that search engines will always try to make you spend your hard-earned money on their advertising platforms. Do not get us wrong, advertising is a very important part of any online marketing strategy, however this needs to be done in an intrinsic way with other efforts.

Source
'Don't Believe an SEO Expert Who Tells You Any of These 7 Lies' by Andrew Raso. Accessed from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279345 on the 22nd of August, 2016.