There are many SEO myths floating around out there but most of them are from back in the day when search engines could be easily fooled and manipulated. We shouldn’t forget that what worked once upon a time may have a negative effect at the moment.

Below are some SEO myths that have developed over the years and are holding back many SEOs in their efforts to effectively plan to rank on search engines:

Myth # 1: SEO is just about keyword stuffing & keyword density is important

First of all, SEO isn’t about "keywords" , but key phrases rather. A thing to note here is that synonyms are important too. Most SEOs give too much importance to keyword density being an exact percentage and it’s a common myth in SEO that keyword density is used by search engines for ranking purposes. What is keyword density? A mathematical formula that divides the number of words on a page by the number of times a given keyword appears. There is no fixed percentage or specific number of times a keyphrase should appear in an article. It should always be about the readers first and SEO second.

A lot of websites just repeat the same keywords again because they think keyword stuffing will give result in higher rankings. There was a time when this worked but Google is much smarter now and SEO works differently.

Bottom line: There is no magic number as to how many times you should repeat a keyword on a page but it must appear in an organized way and visitors should not feel guilty for his/her decision to open your page.

Myth # 2: Social media and SEO aren’t related at all

The crossover of SEO and social media has been termed “social search”. Google believes that content that is of high quality will drive more social shares. Bloggers love using Facebook, Twitter and other social networks to promote their content but they believe that the links from those sites have no value as they are nofollow links. The good news is that search engines do acknowledge those links and social search prioritizes content that has been shared by social media influencers.

Bottom line: Your social media efforts are not going in vain so stop worrying that they are useless and have no effect on SEO because they are important. Start spending that energy on making sure that you have a social media strategy and think of it as part of your search optimization efforts.

Myth # 3: Meta Tags are great for SEO

Titles and meta descriptions are of importance but keyword meta tags are a thing of the past that Google doesn’t use to rank your site. Keyword meta tags used to be popular once upon a time and were mainly misused by bad SEOs to overstuff keywords into their site to help in ranking. They would include all of the keywords they wanted to rank for and meta tags were ultimately misused so search engines dropped them.

Bottom line: Instead of worrying about meta tags, focus your time on writing an excellent meta description that will make a searcher click-through to your site and relevant titles that will help you rank. Remember that SEO is not all about meta tags, at least, not anymore.

Myth # 4: I must submit my site to Google

Many site owners feel the need to submit their site to Google in the form of a sitemap. Some even believe they need to submit it every now and then instead of just once so they can successfully rank in search engines. A brand new site can submit their sitemap to Google to speed things up but even that is not a hardcore necessity. The truth is that Google can find you whether you submit a sitemap or not. Crawlers will find your site and index it.

Bottom line: Don’t stress over submitting and re-submitting your sitemap. Google will find you even if you try to hide! This goes for other search engines as well.

Myth # 5: The H1 Is the most important on-page element

Think of the content and headings on a web page as a hierarchy. They are presented in a tiered approach for the user and search engines. The title tag that the headline is written in has little to no influence on your overall SEO performance. Heading tags, be it H1, H2 and so on are mainly used for styling purposes. The H1 tag is simply part of the CSS which the designer puts together in relation to the font styling and sizes. However we cannot forget that titles and meta descriptions are still important for SEO.

Bottom line: H1 tags used to be important but search engines are smart and it is a thing of the past now. Don’t forget that you are writing your content for your users and the heading should tell them what the content is about and not be stuffed with keywords and lose all meaning.

We hope we busted some common SEO myths that are being thrown out there and helped de-stress you. These myths might have been true at one point but there is no need to worry about them if you want to achieve better rankings on search engines so don’t get caught up in the web of myths being sprung out there.

If you know any other SEO myths let us know in the comment section below.