Give someone a fish and they’ll EAT for one day. Teach someone to fish and they’ll EAT for a lifetime. Yes, that’s an SEO pun. It’s also the goal of this article.
If you pop into either of the fantastic SEO communities on Twitter or LinkedIn, you’ll inevitably encounter some common SEO myths:
- “Longer dwell time means a good user experience, so it must be a ranking factor”
- “A high bounce rate indicates a bad user experience, so it must be bad for SEO”
Social media posts like these get tons of engagement. As a result, they amplify the myths we try to squash through repetition, false evidence, and faulty logic. The problem isn’t limited to social media, either. There are plenty of high-profile websites that package hypotheses as facts because readers eat them up.
These myths are a huge problem because they’re red herrings. They cause marketers to prioritize projects that won’t improve the content, user experience, or Google search performance.
So how can the SEO community rally around the truth? We can start by doing two things:
- SEOs must admit our personalities and professions hardwire us to believe myths. We have a deep desire for answers, control, and predictability, as well as a fierce distrust of Google.
- We need to recognize the psychological and environmental factors that influence our ability to sort fact from fiction.
So rather than busting individual myths, let’s ask ourselves “why?” instead. In other words, let’s learn to fish.
Internal reasons we believe SEO myths
Let’s dig into some internal factors, such as our thoughts and feelings, that influence our beliefs.
1. SEOs need structure and control
SEO is a fascinating branch of marketing because our performance is driven by a constantly evolving algorithm that we don’t control. In fact,