As co-founder of web analytic companies KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg, Neil Patel knows a thing or seven about search engine optimisation (SEO). In a recent blog post, Neil reveals seven ‘lies’ about SEO that any content-marketer should be aware of. Here are the most important three.
1. You should let authority sites re-use your content
The problem: Republished content is duplicate content. Even if the authority site creates a links back to you, search engines – notably Google – will favour the authority site in rankings, not yours.
The fix: Either don’t publish to authority sites, or get them to use a canonical tag to link back to you. Which begs the question… Canonical tags let webmasters tell a search engine which page should be credited as the original.
2. More pages of content is better
The problem: It’s easy to create a website or blog with hundreds of pages of quality content that performs poorly in search results. Without links to your content from other sites and little sharing on social media, your site could easily become a search engine oversight. According to Neil, adding more pages can in fact hurt your traffic.
The fix: Think about your audience and what is likely to interest them. Perhaps you could make a plan for your content consisting of the types of articles or blogs you want to create, and when. Perhaps a news-based story on a Monday, a commentary on a Tuesday, a feature on Thursday and a round-up newsletter on a Friday.
3. Don’t buy links
The problem: Bought links may indeed hurt your SEO rankings – essentially you are manipulating them. But the tactic might be good for business. Neil says:
For example, we bought over $10,000 worth of links and ads from CSS galleries to Crazy Egg before we launched. This resulted in an increase in monthly recurring income of over $2,000. To this date, some of those customers are still with us, which means our link-buying approach was profitable.
The fix: You can have your content cake and eat it. Buy those links if it makes good business sense, but be sure that they are ‘nofollow’ links. Search engines don’t count nofollow links and therefore won’t damage your SEO ranking.
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