Misconceptions of SEO

Managing the SEO of a site can be a complicated undertaking. There are so many parts to it: online, offline, backlinks, link profile etc. The fact that things can change quite quickly also means you need to be aware and up to date about everything that is happening. As a result there is a lot of information available on SEO and best practices etc. Even so, there are lot of misconceptions. Here are a few of them:

You can compete with the big boys

While this might be true for some keywords, Google generally favors the larger sites. Search for most commercial terms and you will the larger sites and brands on top. This is because they want to provide the best experience for the person searching and that usually means the larger sites.

SEO for your whole site

In reality, you rank only by the page. Which means that you don’t have to go about optimizing your entire site. Although that would help, it would not be a wise use of your time. Pick the best pages you have that should rank those and do SEO on those.

You need to rank all your keywords

For smaller niche sites, sometimes ranking well for just one or two phrases will be more than enough. Trying to rank for too wide a range of keywords will end up diluting the benefits of inbound link anchor text. Pick your best pages and start with the primary way you want people to be search for those pages.