10 SEO Myths Killing Your Business

You are probably falling for at least one of these

When I began learning about search engine optimization (SEO) years ago, I heard a lot of contradictory information. Some SEO professionals claimed it takes months of work to move the needle, while many entrepreneurs told me their website developer had already SEO-optimized their website in a single week. Some SEO companies charged thousands of dollars for a few backlinks, while others stated they could get 20 backlinks for $500 or less. More recently, I have witnessed hoards of influencers claiming AI will automate your SEO, while others claim that AI will soon make SEO totally obsolete.

Attempting to make sense of all this conflicting SEO information

Through a lot of personal research and 100s of hours of trial and error, I feel that I now have a decent handle on what works and does not work for SEO. However, while my personal SEO knowledge has continued to increase, so have the myths and misinformation I have heard from many business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. In this article, I will be diving into the 10 most common myths I hear about SEO and my counters to them.

#1 - Every business should be prioritizing SEO
I have witnessed firsthand that effective SEO takes a solid amount of time and is not cheap. While you will likely see some solid traction within the first 1-2 months, expect 6+ months of work and $10k+ spent before you really start to see results in a big way.
Furthermore, some niches either have low overall search volume or the most desirable searches are extremely competitive.

If you need results fast, SEO is not for you. If you are not willing to commit to the long-term process, SEO is not for you. If you have not studied your niche and identified high quality, relevant, high volume search terms with low competition, then you are not yet ready to make a judgement call about whether SEO makes sense for your business.

#2 - AI will totally automate your SEO
My formerly carefree and pleasurable Instagram scrolling experience has now been sabotaged by an endless barrage of flashy ads promising to ‘automate my SEO using AI’. While years ago I might have taken the bait, these days, I can clearly see the holes in these offers.

“So we fired Steve and brought on XX-778, our new head of SEO”

The first thing to ask is, ‘What are the key elements to move the needle for SEO?’ The three biggest ones are on-page SEO (i.e. site optimization), content creation, and backlinks.

The second thing to ask is, ‘Which of these elements can AI help with?’ AI can certainly help with on-page SEO, by creating Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, and H1s that include your relevant keywords. AI also does have the ability to simplify your content creation, but this will only take you so far (I elaborate on this in #3 below). For getting backlinks, AI is of little help, and there is still a lot of manual research, list building, outreach, and follow-up that is still required.

The third thing to ask is, “Which of these key elements takes up the most time and manual effort?” While content creation and acquiring backlinks are both contenders for the most time consuming, the one I would argue is the least time consuming is the on-page SEO. The initial on-page SEO update only needs to be done once, and unless you have a mega-site that offers a plethora of services or serves tons of markets, getting your on-page SEO squared away should take a week or less (Note: there are multiple levels of on-page SEO optimization, as described in #10). While AI can help to automate a lot of these manual steps, this is just the first mile of a much longer SEO journey which is all about fresh content and backlinks. For that reason, I am highly skeptical of any promises of AI to automate SEO.

#3 - AI content creation will handle most of the heavy lifting for SEO
While many savvy entrepreneurs refuse to fall for the ‘AI will automate your SEO’ pitch, the notion that AI can automate your content creation seems a lot more plausible. AI tools out there, such as Jake Ward’s Byword, promise you 1,000s of SEO optimized articles at the click of a button.

The rub though is that the content is exceptionally repetitive, does not reflect well on your brand and is not written in a way that is well optimized for SEO. Good SEO content not only references your brand’s relevant keywords, but also does an effective job of answering searcher’s most common questions. When writing an outline for an SEO article, I will check Google’s ‘Things to Know’, ‘People Also Ask’ and ‘Related Searches’ sections to help me structure the article in such a way that users will find it useful and it will be more likely to rank for SEO. In addition, I will do my best to ensure that relevant studies and research are included and that the article incorporates internal linking.

Chat-GPT’s response when you ask why it repeated the same paragraph 10 times

AI-generated content does none of this. It may meet your desired word count, mention your relevant keywords, and even sound fairly coherent. But the content will almost always be rambling, poorly structured, and unlikely to engage readers. Every time I have tried to promote AI-generated content, I have been frustrated with the outcome. Even having AI take the first pass at it and then attempting to edit it myself has not proven much more effective. After multiple attempts with AI content creation, I finally decided that human copywriters are a far better option, though I do encourage them to use AI to flesh out sections or to find good quotes, studies, or research.

#4 - All backlinks are created equal
If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “We hired a great team in India who has gotten us dozens of backlinks” I could retire in luxury. A simple post on UpWork or Fiverr asking for help securing backlinks will attract these unscrupulous operators like a moth to a flame. Almost without fail, it is a disaster when you peak under the hood. ‘No-follow’ links, toxic links from shady click farms, guest posts that are removed within 1 week of posting, and worse.

When you peak under the hood and see your SEO backlink profile

In fairness, there are some trustworthy and reliable backlinking partners out there, whether they are from India or anywhere else. But it is imperative that you look into the quality of the backlinks you are getting and ensure they are credible sites that will help your long-term SEO prospects.

#5 - Every link back to your website is a guaranteed backlink 
Expanding on point #4, you should absolutely do your due diligence and verify that you are actually getting the backlinks you expect. Some specific cases to call out:

-You may do a guest post or link insertion only to find out that the link back to your site has been tagged by the site owner as a ‘no-follow’ link. This means that the link carries no SEO-juice and will not benefit your SEO in any way.

-You are doing a guest post or link insertion, confirm that it is getting properly indexed by Google. You can do this by typing ‘site:[url]’ into Google (url = the URL of your article) and verifying that the article comes up. If it does not, then something is off and you will need to investigate.

-You have verified that Google is indexing your backlink, but it is removed at some point by the site owner. This is why I recommend using a tool such as SEMRush or AHRefs to check on your backlink profile regularly.

#6 - You should never purchase backlinks
When I started exploring the SEO space, I heard certain people online say that Google frowned upon purchasing backlinks and the ‘right way’ to do things was to get all natural backlinks. I entertained this initially, and reached out to thousands of websites on behalf of numerous clients asking if they would be open to allowing us to guest post or if they would consider linking to us in exchange for a link back. Invariably, I would get a reply saying, ‘We do permit guest posts or link insertions for a price. How does _____ sound?’

How I felt when I started purchasing backlinks

This happened so frequently that I began to see it was not a coincidence. Furthermore, as I expanded my SEO education and watched training videos from some of the SEO greats, I saw that nearly all of them paid for some percent of their overall backlinks, and the notion you could succeed without doing so was flimsy at best.

#7 - SEO is all about inserting relevant keywords into your content
I have been repeatedly shocked by the number of entrepreneurs I talk to who proudly assert they are already totally SEO optimized and need no further help. However, it is almost always the case with these folks that when I ask, ‘How have your keyword rankings and traffic improved since your changes?’ they give me a bewildered look.

At the end of the day, the goal of SEO is to boost traffic to your website; ideally qualified traffic that will result in conversions. Obsessing over new content generation or backlink quantity without tying them back to objective, measurable metrics is silly. Make sure you are always keeping your eye on the ball and have a clear understanding of whether your results are moving forward.

#8 - You should have in-house experts handle all your content writing
Some founders I have worked with are perfectionists at heart and struggle with the idea of delegating their content writing to a 3rd party. “We can handle the SEO writing - no one knows our business as well as we do” they will say.

While this is admirable, and founders should prioritize key communication and thought leadership pieces, I have rarely seen companies successfully handle their own SEO content writing. There are a few reasons for this:

-First, as discussed in #3, effective SEO content follows a specific structure, where you tailor it around common user questions and where specific keywords are mentioned. This kills a lot of the creativity and originality that the in-house writers desire, and thus dampens their enthusiasm.

-Second, since the advent of Chat-GPT, you need to generate a greater quantity of SEO-optimized content to stay competitive. Internal teams have so much else going on, that if SEO writing is just another one of their many priorities, I have found it very rare that they can consistently churn out SEO content on a consistent schedule.

-Third, it is not a great ROI for their time. There are so many other things that executives or thought leaders on a team could be doing to move their business’s forward. Consequently, they are likely to feel resentful if huge chunks of their time and energy go towards SEO content writing.

Average executive after writing his 4th SEO content piece this month

To be clear, I do think it is valuable to have content written by the key thought leaders in the company that is thorough, authoritative, and has a unique look and feel. But, this may be more like 1-2 solid pieces of content per month, versus the 6+ pieces of monthly content you will want to generate to have the best shot of winning the SEO game.

#9 - You should use content writing services to handle all of your content writing
As a counterpoint to #8, there are some founders who are excessively metrics-driven and do not care who produces their site’s content as long as they hit their desired content quotas. Early in my SEO journey, one service that I heard frequently mentioned was TextBroker, which enables you to write a content brief and then farm out your request to content writers for a relatively price.

Initially, I was impressed by the price and speed of content creation that TextBroker offered. However, as I used the service more and more, the variation in article quality and style started to wear on me. Sometimes, I would get an exceptionally well-written and well researched article that was almost immediately ready for publishing. Other times, I would get an article that read like a 3rd grader wrote it, with sloppy grammar and poorly backed claims. It felt like I was playing content roulette, and if I was unsatisfied with the outcome, all I could do was cross my fingers and spin the wheel again.

“Not satisfied with your last article? User-7524 would love to hear your feedback!”

It was from this experience with TextBroker that I decided to form direct relationships with talented copywriters. This proved far more fruitful, and resulted in a consistent voice and quality of content. Furthermore, in the event that an individual article was subpar, I was able to hold the author accountable and give them feedback that resulted in better future output. For anyone considering SEO content, I would highly suggest working with individual copywriters versus attempting to churn out AI generated slop or farming out your content to an faceless content creation service.

#10 - SEO optimization is a ‘one and done’ situation
I am seeing more and more website builder tools, web development agencies, and analytics providers who offer ‘SEO optimization’ as a free perk in their offerings. Many entrepreneurs jump with joy at the prospect of completing their SEO optimization in one fell swoop. But, there are unfortunately many issues with these promises.

First, there is a crucial, consultative element to on-site SEO optimization that very few of these parties do. It is essential to do SEO research using a tool like SEMRush or AHRefs, put together a list of desirable keywords to target, ask questions to understand the client’s business and then augment your list of keywords based on their input. This process can be relatively time consuming and manual, so most of these companies simply throw a few nice sounding terms in your Meta Title and Meta Description and call it a day.

Second, there are levels to on-site SEO optimization. An initial step would be making sure you have relevant Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions for all pages. Next, SEO-optimize your H1s and make sure all of your images have alt-text. Then, review your sitemap to ensure it is well structured for SEO and make any necessary changes to speed up your website and ensure the UX and UI are optimized. A final step would be creating additional pages of content or re-structuring your site to capture more relevant traffic. This is an ongoing process, and anyone who says, ‘Your site is totally SEO-optimized’ with a few days of work is like a fitness trainer who offers a free session and then says ‘You are totally fit now’.

Conclusion
There has always been a lot of confusion and misinformation in the SEO space, and this has only accelerated with the addition of Chat-GPT and AI tools. While this article should hopefully provide a lot of clarity and insight on some of the most prevalent SEO myths, you are bound to encounter many others as well. The best piece of advice I can offer when faced with contradictory information is to test it out for yourself, see how the advice impacts your keyword rankings and traffic, and use the results as your north star. As Bruce Lee once said, “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.”