Christine Darby // Published: June 2024 // Updated: August 2024

If the phrase “debunking SEO myths” sounds like a gimmick, we understand your skepticism. However, after observing “leading experts” in online forums perpetuating misconceptions such as: “Google won’t index pages with less than 300 words because it’s thin content,” we felt compelled to address the issue. This post clarifies inaccurate information that can confuse those new to search engine optimization.

Here we look at SEO myths related to:

Misunderstandings about website optimization are widespread. Individuals new to the topic are particularly vulnerable due to their limited experience. In a field where the rules seem to change frequently, it can be difficult for beginners to distinguish between best practices and noise.

Forums: Many time-strapped small businesses and startups seek quick answers online, but online forums can be unregulated spaces full of self-promotion, affiliate relationships, and information manipulation aimed at boosting product sales.
Social media: Flawed advice circulating on user-driven platforms like YouTube or TikTok only adds to the chaos. Social algorithms prioritize engagement. And creators often prioritize views and followers over factual accuracy.
Software: SEO tools can also contribute to the confusion by overemphasizing certain metrics that do not directly impact ranking.

Novices are even more susceptible to SEO misinformation due to a cognitive bias called the Anchoring Bias, where we place more importance on the first piece of information we encounter. This initial information acts as an anchor, making it difficult to adjust one’s understanding even when presented with more accurate or comprehensive data later on.

Over the years, we’ve engaged with well over a thousand small businesses in various capacities. Early on, many clients knew little about SEO, which meant they had no preconceived notions. However, as general awareness of SEO has increased, so has the prevalence of misinformation, leading even savvy website owners astray.

Below we dispel common SEO misconceptions that mislead beginners and help you recognize which advice simply doesn’t hold water.

Wordpress vs Squarespace vs Wix vs Webflow

Myth: One platform outperforms others in terms of SEO capabilities.
Reality: The core principles of SEO apply universally across all website platforms. Articles such as those questioning “Is Webflow good or bad for SEO?” often serve as clickbait and tend to confuse rather than clarify.
While there are minor, platform-specific nuances to consider, these don’t justify the wild proliferation of resources dedicated to topics such as “The Ultimate Guide to Wordpress SEO” and similar.
For most small businesses, selecting a reputable website platform and investing time in learning how to do SEO is sufficient for success. If doing your own SEO, focus on mastering the basics, refer to the guidelines provided by your platform, and hire professional help when you get stuck or have a question.
Note: When we first used—and possibly coined—the term “Squarespace SEO,” it felt redundant. Again, SEO principles are universal. But this was before Squarespace had extensive support docs and well-before Google offered beginner-friendly SEO guides. Back then, DIY no-code website builders were just hitting the scene, Wordpress developers were feeling unsettled, and misinformation was common. Small businesses needed to know they could be successful regardless of platform.

Text Length

Myths: (1) Short content is thin content. OR (2) Longer content is needed to rank.
Reality: According to Google, “thin content” refers to low-quality or low-value content, not a certain number of words. But some SEO tools count words, leading to the misconception that “text length” affects indexing or ranking.
To demonstrate there is no ideal blog post length, we wrote a 290-word post on “SEO word count.” The post performs well enough to challenge the notion that content length matters. While a longer article might capture more search terms, our goal was not to be exhaustive but to illustrate the point.
Additionally, creatives are often told their homepages can’t rank without “more text” or “FAQ sections.” This is simply not true. For artists, a simple homepage can suffice, especially for brand searches. And you can find numerous examples of blog posts with “less than 300 words” that attract thousands of organic visitors month after month, even in niches traditionally dominated by long-form content.

URLs

Myths: (1) URLs should contain a certain number of words. OR (2) Keywords are needed in URLs for search engines.
Reality: Some resources actually suggest using a specific number of words in URLs. Statements like this are quite frustrating. Not only is this misguided, but it could cause harm if site owners believe this is true and change URLs before understanding the potential impact of structural changes on SEO.
Keywords are encouraged in URLs as a best practice, but this is for user experience versus search engines. To illustrate this point, we gave this article on “SEO myths” a random URL of “h0gw4sh,” and the page was indexed and appearing for appropriate queries within a matter of hours. Many beginners believe keywords in a URL impact SEO, leading to overuse. Modern search engines are sophisticated and do not rely on keyword-stuffed URLs to understand page content.
Google’s documentation says: “When possible, use readable words rather than long ID numbers,” nowhere does it mention “keywords.” Keep your eyes open and you’ll see plenty of high-performing pages with nonsense URLs.
We advocate for SEO-friendly URLs (clean, clear, and concise), but focusing on URL word count or keyword stuffing is not the right approach.

Image Alt Text

Myths: (1) Every image requires alt text. OR (2) Alt text is primarily for SEO.
Reality: Some images should have null (empty) alt text. The primary purpose of alt text is to enhance web accessibility for visually impaired users by providing a textual description of images. According to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), decorative images, those used purely for visual decoration and not adding informational content, should use alt="".
Beginners often misunderstand the use of alt text, believing it is mainly a tool for SEO. This misconception leads them to include irrelevant details or neglect the contextual significance of the image. While alt text can have SEO benefits, its main role is to describe images in a meaningful way for those who cannot see them.

Domain Authority

Myth: Moz’s Domain Authority (DA), Ahref’s Domain Rating (DR), or Semrush’s Authority Score (AS) determine a site’s ranking ability.
Reality: DA is a proprietary metric developed by Moz to estimate the likelihood of a website ranking in search engine results. Following Moz’s lead, other SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush created their own similar metrics. Agencies that “sell backlinks” promote these link-based metrics as significant. However, Google does not use third-party metrics or scores in its ranking algorithms. Importantly, buying backlinks for ranking purposes violates Google’s guidelines.
While these scores can be useful for broad analysis, they are frequently misunderstood by novices, who might cite “low DA” as a reason for poor site performance in search results. With experience, you’ll find many examples of sites with low DA scores that rank well and outperform sites with higher DA scores.
Regarding the discussions about the Google leak where people claimed Google representatives “lied” about authority scores: whenever John Mueller of Google has discussed “Domain Authority,” it has been clear that he was referencing these third-party scores, trying to clarify this exact misconception. If Google’s algorithm uses a type of site authority signal, it is not DA, DR, or AS.

“SEO Scores”

Myths: (1) A high “score” from an SEO tool indicates “good SEO.” OR (2) A low “score” indicates “poor SEO.”
Reality: Relying too heavily on plugins or tools often causes beginners to miss the basics of SEO, leading to over-optimization and running in circles. SEO scans, scores, and tools do not guarantee ranking. If they did, everyone would use them, and that would be the end of SEO competition.
Scoring tools identify measurable factors and indicate compliance, often applying hard numbers to situations where there are no fixed rules or to factors that don’t impact ranking. Beginners chase perfect scores on minor issues that barely affect SEO performance. You want to prioritize actions that have a proven impact.

<H1> Headings

Myths: (1) A webpage will be penalized for having more than one <H1> heading. OR (2) A webpage will be penalized for not having an <H1> tag.
Reality: It is commonly recommended to use one H1 element to describe a page’s main topic, with subsequent headings (<H2>, <H3>, etc.) used in a logical order. This hierarchical heading structure helps to organize content, making it more accessible and understandable for search engines and users, especially those using screen readers. But while writing good headings is important, there are almost always more pressing SEO priorities to address.
From a Google perspective, using multiple <H1> tags is technically fine, so there is no need for concern if your website template uses more than one <H1> element. Google has also indicated it is acceptable if a webpage lacks an <H1> element. Some tools flag these scenarios as “SEO issues,” but Google states a site will “rank perfectly fine” with zero or multiple H1s.
Note that from an accessibility standpoint, an <H1> tag enhances user experience by providing a clear content hierarchy. However, according to accessibility guidelines it is acceptable for the <H1> to not be the first heading on the page. And Google’s official stance on headings: “it doesn't matter if you’re using them out of order.”

Blogging and Publishing Frequency

Myths: (1) Every website needs a blog OR (2) Frequent publishing is necessary.
Reality: Not every business needs a blog—and a poorly executed blog can actually hurt a site. If you choose to maintain a blog, focus on quality rather than quantity. High-quality, relevant content is far more valuable than frequent, mediocre posts.
Updating and improving existing posts can be just as, if not more, effective than constantly publishing new content. Refreshing older posts with updated information, new insights, or improved SEO can significantly boost their performance.
Business blogging is not a one-size-fits-all solution or approach. If you’re blogging solely because you heard “Google likes it,” it’s time to reevaluate your strategy.

Meta Descriptions

Myths: (1) Meta descriptions directly impact ranking. OR (2) Meta description length matters.
Reality: A page’s meta description is not a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm. Despite this, some tools overemphasize its importance, causing unnecessary concern among website owners. Tools also often count the characters in a meta description, but the character count doesn’t matter.
A well-crafted meta description can positively impact a page’s click-through rate (CTR), which can signal to search engines that your content is valuable, but it’s important to understand that Google primarily uses page content to automatically generate snippets for search results. These days, they “occasionally” use a <meta name="description"> tag if it is more appropriate, but this is not guaranteed.
If you don’t like the snippet Google displays, follow their guidelines and write a stronger meta description. However, keep in mind that for every unique query, a different snippet may be shown. In our experience, what Google shows is usually a more engaging choice than the often over-optimized blurb written by site owners. Don’t expend excessive effort here. Note that Google offers a nosnippet meta tag, but the vast majority of small business sites have no need for it.

Duplicate Content

Myth: There is a duplicate content penalty.
Reality: Google has clarified numerous times that there isn’t a “penalty” for duplicate content in the way many people fear. Instead, issues arise when content is duplicated across different websites without adding any value, or worse, if it’s scraped from other sites. For your own site, having similar content across multiple URLs is typically managed well by Google’s algorithms, which are designed to filter and prioritize content effectively.

Schema Markup (Structured Data)

Myths: (1) Schema markup boosts rankings. OR (2) Structured data always generates rich results.
Reality: Structured data does not directly affect search engine rankings, but it can help make your content more noticeable and attractive in search engine results. Structured data can enable rich results such as star ratings, images, prices, and other extra information directly in the search results. These enhancements can make listings stand out and potentially improve click-through rates (CTR).
Regarding rich results, Google only supports rich results for certain types of markup and they point out that “using structured data enables a feature to be present, it does not guarantee that it will be present.”

SEO Maintenance

Myths: (1) SEO is a one-time task. OR (2) SEO requires regular monthly monitoring.
Reality: For most businesses, SEO is an ongoing process because search algorithms, your competition, and user behavior constantly change—but the frequency of needed updates can vary widely.
While some businesses benefit from regular SEO help, for many SMBs, a robust initial setup combined with periodic check-ups can suffice. “Monthly SEO monitoring” is often unnecessary. This is especially true in less competitive niches, and it can even apply to businesses traditionally sold on “monthly packages” for local SEO services.

More SEO Misconceptions

Remember, the fact that a tool measures something doesn’t make it a priority.

404s. 404s don’t harm indexing or ranking. If a page is gone, it’s gone. However, you should update broken links and use a 301 redirect when necessary to guide users to relevant content. Learn when, why, and how to fix 404 errors.
410s. Google’s John Mueller jokingly referred to 410s as the “alt-tag of HTTP codes.” Using 410 over 404 when appropriate may be technically correct, but this doesn’t mean it’s an SEO gain. If your website platform doesn’t support this status code, it’s fine.
302s. Google’s John Mueller explains 302 redirects are fine.
Keyword density or frequency. You do not need to “use your keyword every 100 to 200 words” or ensure keywords are a certain percentage of your text. Focus on natural, high-quality SEO content, versus “writing for search engines” or meaningless metrics, and you will be fine. Note that “keyword prominence,” or stating the topic early in your content, is different from keyword density.
Site speed. A fast site is good for user experience, but improving speed alone won’t propel you to top rankings. If using a website builder, focus on factors you can control, such as optimizing image file sizes and removing unnecessary plugins. Many businesses are misled by spammy SEOs offering “free scans or audits” into believing that website speed is a major problem. However, we can almost guarantee it is not your SEO issue.
Meta keywords. We haven’t had anyone ask about “meta keywords” in years, but then a client mentioned that someone told them their site was “missing a keywords meta tag.” Neither Google nor Bing uses this tag. If interested, learn about the meta tags Google and Bing support.
Near me. For local service businesses, an optimized Google Business Profile is the driver of “near me” type searches, don’t use the phrase on your site.
Text to HTML ratio. From a Google perspective, you can ignore this metric.

Remain Skeptical

In addition to the Anchoring Bias we mentioned above, the Illusory Truth Effect causes repeated statements to be perceived as more truthful, regardless of their accuracy. Exercise caution when considering SEO advice—take a discerning approach to what you read and implement.

Small businesses should remain focused on a high-quality website, enhancing user experience, improving ranking, increasing organic traffic, and driving conversions, taking a holistic “SXO” approach—not chasing fads and hacks. Apply common sense and critical thinking to what you hear and read. With continued real-world experience, you’ll be able to tune out the noise and distinguish between myth and reality.