seo lies are everywhere. anyone can start a blog, call himself a seo expert and then try to sell you “seo secrets”. that makes 90% of the seo online info wrong. you should question the veracity of everything you read online, especially if it’s seo related. you should even doubt this article.

disclaimer: at fatcat.ninja we are not trying to sell you anything with this post. we do use search engine optimization principles in all the websites we create with the purpose of increasing our clients web traffic and help them excel within their competitive landscape. but we do not sell seo services. we just want to write a helpful article and shed some light on this subject.

without further ado, here are the the top 10 seo lies that you really should stop believing.

#1 content needs to be 500 words

thought experiment: stop thinking about your next meal – cans of tuna anyone? – and instead think about how many websites you visit that are full of 500 word articles. none? that’s like saying dogs are more intelligent than cats – it’s unrealistic. furthermore, if you follow this dumb rule it will make your site look unnatural and guess what? google hates that. it makes you look very automated and if you pay for content that’s a major footprint. you should mix it up, make some 300 word posts with images and a video, while making others from 500 to 1200 words, along with some posts like this one, that is 1343 words.

#2 content is king

the myth goes like this: if you have lots of content google will rank you high, hence content is king. this trendy seo advice is a lie. unless you can understand how content can help you get links, you can write as many posts as you can that google won’t reward your site. the solution? publishing good content gives your traffic something to read every time they visit. on top of that, good content will receive shares that will attract new visitors to your site. but remember, if you don’t have traffic to begin with, quality posts won’t make them appear from thin air. let me give you some practical examples: for the huffington post, tmz or business insider “content is not king” because they get millions of visitors a day. but this same approach for your local pet shop will get you nothing. remember, content is a means to get links… and links are king.

#3 you will get penalized if you buy links

links are the most important part of seo. people say “content is king” but that’s just not true. content is a means to get links. the biggest sites on the web buy as many links as they can secure. they have a team of people searching and paying off popular bloggers to get their links in their content so that they look “natural”. we love google, but even google lies. it wants you to believe that if you buy links they will ruin your online presence but that only happens if they can actually catch you. if you buy (bad) links from a shady company then you will get caught (do you know jeff deutsch’s story?). but if you pay some bloggers for natural looking links you’re good to go. we don’t sell links, sorry. but you will always need links to rank.

#4 guest blogging is trouble

the myth: “guest blogging links are trouble and they should all be ‘no-followed'”. again, if you go to a shady site and hire some guy to write a “native article” in his blog with a link to your site, that can be trouble because his blog is probably fake, with fake traffic and fake shares. how do you know this? well, because he only uses it to sell “native articles”. it is common knowledge that when a google rep finds a blog like this he “burns” all the links on those articles making your domain worthless. but guest posting on real websites with real traffic and real social shares is worth gold.

#5 letting other sites publish your content leads to more exposure

you bought that seo e-book from 29.99€ and it tells you about syndicating your blog so other websites will publish your content bringing traffic to your site. that is just stupid. doing that will result in duplicate content and if a larger authority site is syndicating your content, it will be indexed on their site first, leaving your site to be penalized by google for duplicate content. if you can make sure that the site republishing your content includes a canonical tag identifying your own site as the original creator, it would give you a small seo reward but, trust me, it’s not worth the risk.

#6 private blog networks (PBN) are the only way to rank now

in theory PBN should work but you will not be able to find any that does. a good PBN should remain private and only the owner should know about it. this means that every single service that you find on a google search claiming PBN links is worth cat poop. a good PBN is custom build for each individual site and it cannot have links to multiple paying websites. unless you really know what you’re doing you should stay away from PNB services.

#7 high bounce rate is bad for ranking

analysing your bounce rate is a good thing and you should worry about user engagement to keep them on the site. but a high bounce rate isn’t going to impact your rankings.

#8 domain authority (DA) is better than google’s page ranking (PR)

if you’re learning about seo, you probably came across DA (you can try it here), a tool that is supposed to be similar to google’s PR. it’s true that it can give a good indication of a website’s authority and if you try it out on your own company website it will probably show you a sad true (unless you run a popular blog). we already established that buying links to your site can be a good thing and some “seo experts” agree with this and they recommended using DA to help you decide if you should buy a link or not. the problem is that lots of shady blogs full of spam rank 50+ on DA due to thousands of fake indian and chinese links and if you buy a link from them you will disappear from google. you should do your own research on the links you buy and don’t believe this DA trend.

#9 we can guarantee top rankings

this is the ultimate myth. nobody can guarantee top rankings and anyone claiming that is trying to get your money.

#10 social shares are the ultimate seo solution (buy 100,000 of them for only 29,99€)

don’t get me wrong, social shares are good, they tell google that your content is popular but if you think you are going to rank with social signals alone, you are high on catnip. the facebook likes for sale are fake, they come from india and china farms, and google knows that.

conclusion

hopefully this article will help you clear up some misconceptions about seo but the web of lies doesn’t end here. let me give you some bonus tips that might help you spot unreliable information:

• if a company is promising that you will rank #1 on google for some monthly fee that’s a big fat (cat) lie. no one can promise that, and not for 100€ a month.
• if a company or a blog is claiming to have top-secret seo tips it’s another lie. don’t even get me started on those 29.99€ top secret seo e-books that will make your site rank on top of every google search (but hurry, there are only 3 more available at this price). if anyone had a secret seo formula they would not sell it to you… for 29.99€.
• any blog post from a self called seo expert / guru / authority / master / wizard.

remember, there is no bullet proof seo solution.

if you have any questions or if you want to share your favorite seo lies, please leave a comment below.