A quick note:

Rand Fishkin was kind enough to tweet my original article before I rebranded my website and moved to FortuneLords.com. I just want to add that I didn’t say that subdomains are better than subfolders.

My finding is that it doesn’t matter if you use a subdomain or subfolder if you start a new website or blog. But you should not move your established website on a subdomain. This will hurt your organic ranking temporarily or even for a long time.

From a technical point of view, Google treats subdomains the same as subdirectories, according to John Mueller.

You probably know at least several SEO myths. 

For the last ten years, these myths and misconceptions have become so many, causing confusion among programmers, webmasters, designers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and digital marketers.

Pretty much millions of people.

Here are the biggest myths, which are holding you back from your SEO success!

1. Exact match domains rank higher: EMDs may rank well in Google organic results for a while, but they are a symbol of low-quality websites and usually don’t hold the rankings for too long. They are often backed by spam link building.

2. Starting a website on an expired domain is better: Many dropped or expiring domains are heavily spammed and may permanently be banned from Google index. Always check the historical backlink data and the snapshots in the Web Archive. Furthermore, these domains abused for SEO for too long, and for a piece of mind, start fresh with a new domain.

3. Domain Age is Important: Small and new websites outrank older ones when their content is better, and they get quality relevant backlinks. 

4. Regional Domains provide huge SEO advantage: This study shows us that Google prioritizes quality information over local content. At least, this appears to be Google’s philosophy.

5. Domain registration length help with SEO: This is one of the oldest SEO myths. Registration length does not increase Google search engine rankings.

6. Google penalties don’t transfer with 301 redirects: If you move your penalized website to a new domain, Google may also pass along the penalty even without redirecting the URLs.

7. Using 301  redirects for SEO still works: It was working a few years ago. Right now, 301 redirects from old domains you buy only for 301 redirects don’t help much and even can hurt your rankings.

8. Moving a site to a new domain name hurts the site’s search engine rankings: There will be no long-term negative impact on a website’s rankings in the Google search results when you move the website according to Google’s instructions. Only follow the detailed documentation in the Webmaster Tools Help Center when moving a site to a new domain name.

9. Keyword-rich domain names boost search rankings: Small businesses, which are just starting and have no experience with SEO, often think that will help them to rank locally. Google’s John Mueller busted this myth in a post on the Webmaster Central Help Forum.

 

10. Hosting Location is important: It doesn’t matter where you are hosting your website. Try to get your top 10 competitors’ I.Ps from here and check their location on Google Maps. Still, it is better to host your website in the country you are targeting, for example, the United States.

11. You need a dedicated IP to rank well in Google:  Google has stated that a dedicated IP does not affect rankings. Here is what Matt Cutts says about it on Youtube.

12. SEO hosting is still an option for private blog networks: Many people still use this tactic for short-term SEO results. Simply said, SEO hosting leaves huge footprints and is easy to detect from Google. The result is your penalty on its way.

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13. On-page SEO Optimization is Not Important: It is essential as part of your online marketing strategy. On-page optimization is the base from where you start to build up.

14. On-page SEO is All You Need: Although it is important, it is just a basic optimization, which should be a part of every website and will not improve your Google rankings alone.

15. Too Many Dofollow Outbound Links  Can Hurt Rankings: if your outbound links are relevant, this will help you. High ranking pages usually link out to related resources and don’t bother to use the nofollow tag.

16. A few broken links won’t hurt: Having too many broken links on your page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links to determine the Homepage’s quality.

17. The number of Indexed Pages Helps You Rank Higher: In the past, it was a commonly held belief that a higher number of total indexed pages helped rank a site higher in Google. The truth is larger websites don’t automatically rank higher on Google.

18. Schema Markup is a Ranking Factor: It helps search engines to understand your content better. It could improve CTR rates, but it doesn’t influence your rankings directly.

19. H1 tags are a crucial element for SEO: Searchmetrics research shows little correlation between H1 tags and rankings. Still, you should write proper H1 headings but do it primarily for usability and accessibility, not so much for SEO.

20. Meta tags will boost your rankings: Google announced back in 2009 that meta descriptions (and meta keywords) have no bearing on search rankings. Meta descriptions present a significant opportunity for a compelling message, which may improve your click-through rate.

21. It’s good practice to include meta robots tag specifying an index, follow: It’s unnecessary. The engines all assume they are allowed to index and follow unless you specify otherwise.

22. An XML Sitemap Will Boost Your Rankings: It only helps search engines to understand your content better. According to Google, it will not improve your rankings

23. Google Penalizes For Invalid HTML: Since there are a massive number of websites with less than perfect HTML code, Google does not penalize sites that have broken or invalid HTML and does not use validated HTML code as a ranking signal.

24. You should end your URLs in .html: This was never a factor.

25. Including your targeted term in the anchor text of internal links will help: Testing done by MOZ found that is not true.

26. Linking out (such as to Google.com) helps rankings: This doesn’t help at all. It is the other way around; you need to get quality backlinks.

27. Google does not read CSS files: Googlebot can read CSS files. Read the update on their webmaster blog.

28. Internal links don’t matter for SEO: If your site has bad internal navigation, this may affect your user experience (time on site/browsed pages) and results in lower rankings.

29. You should finish your site before starting to worry about SEO: You can begin your on-page SEO optimization at the same time you create your website. Google will crawl your website as soon as it is live.

30. Keywords in HTML comment tags and title attributes of IMG and A HREF tags help for SEO: After many tests with and without them, I didn’t see any ranking benefits at all.

31. Content marketing is all I need: It sure is the most essential part, but without promotion and influencers outreach to help you to amplify your voice, even the best piece of content may remain unknown.

32. Great Content Always Ranks Well: Writing good content helps, but relevant backlinks and user experience are required as well. Great content paired with authority backlinks, on the other hand, is a recipe for success.

33. Your content should be long/short: According to representative John Mueller, Google doesn’t count words on a page to determine to rank. In a comment thread, he cited the fact that Google also searches 140-character Twitter posts.  Sometimes a short article will still generate a lot of shares or comments, which does affect placement. The key is to make sure your SEO copywriting content is unique and compelling.

34. If you have duplicate content, you will be penalized: Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results.

35. You should update your content X times a month: Strive for quality, not quantity. Look at your competitors and define your strategy.

36. Link location in content doesn’t matter: The First link in the article usually has the highest weight. Try to move your most important links at the beginning of your content.

37. My Homepage Needs a Lot of Content:  Your homepage content should be long enough to clarify who you are, what you do, where you’re located (if you’re local), your value proposition, and what visitors should do next. These visitors should leave satisfied, not confused.

38. Content quantity over quality: Google easily detects content farms that produce content only for the sake of it. When there is not enough good user statistics such as visit, time on sites, social activity this is a signal, the content is probably not so great. 

39. Infographics are gone: While link power from infographics directories is decreasing, there is a new way to use infographics for effective link building, and it is called Guestographics. There are 2 million blog posts published today. You need to stand out, providing real value for your visitors.

40. Higher Keyword Density Is Better: Stuffing your keyword across your copy will get you nowhere. It will only disturb your visitors.

41. My business doesn’t need a blog: Every business needs a blog because you need relevant text content and backlinks to rank long-term on Google organic search results. There are news and innovations in every industry. A blog will help you to position yourself as an expert in your niche.

42. Videos Are All You Need: While some sites can do very well only with video, you need to consider that there are some limitations to the audience you can reach. Be sure to back it up with non-video content as well, for best results, use a combination of text and visual content. Don’t forget Google bot need to feed with text content.

43. A/B testing can hurt your rankings: If A/B testing was so bad, do you think Google would offer A/B testing solutions? Just look under the Content Experiments section within Google Analytics. It is their version of A/B testing.

44. Google Can’t Read JavaScript or Ajax: It’s a common misconception that Google can’t read JavaScript or Ajax. The truth is, Google can read JavaScript and is getting better at crawling Ajax content. For example, the index Disqus comments.

45. Having a secure (HTTPS encrypted) site will boost your rankings significantly: In August of 2014, Google announced that they started using HTTPS as a signal in their ranking algorithms, which means if your website still relies on standard HTTP, your rankings could suffer as a result. For now, however, HTTPS remains a “lightweight” signal, affecting fewer than 1% of global queries (according to Google).

46. Googlebot doesn’t read CSS: Google scans CSS for spam tactics like hidden divs.

47. Link Building is Dead: Links still have many years left in them. Backlinks will remain one of the most important factors correlated with high Google rankings.

48. Links Are Out; Citations Are In: This is not true. Co-citations are just a good addition to your link building.

49. Links Quantity is Better Than Link Quality: Several years back, this was real, now one backlink from a relevant and authoritative website is stronger than 1000 shady backlinks.

50. Using a Subdomain for Your Blog Is Bad for SEO: Completely wrong statement. One of the many examples is blog.hubspot.com, which gets 50% of its traffic through organic search.

51. Paying for links will get your site penalized: Yes, certain paid links can give your site a black mark, but there is always a way to acquire quality paid links without risk a Google penalty.

52. All Backlinks Are Equal: The best backlinks are relevant to your industry and come from established and authoritative websites, which are well known in your niche.

53. Nofollow Links Will Hurt You Rankings: They won’t unless you are spamming at a huge scale. It is completely natural to have a certain percentage of nofollow links.

54. Nofollow Links Have No Value: They are crucial to your backlink profile. If Google sees that you have zero nofollow links, this will raise a red flag that you’re only building links and not earning them naturally. Nofollow links have value (they always had), and they aren’t something you should be ignoring any longer. 

55. Anchor Text is Dead: Although many sources claim anchor text power is weakening, it is still important. Look at top websites for your keyword and check their anchor text distribution. 

56. Guest Posting is Dead: Low quality and spammy guest posting will do more harm than good, but if you emphasize quality, it remains one of the most effective link building methods.

57. Reciprocal Links  Still Work: They are long gone. You even risk a penalty if you acquire them on a huge scale. 

58. Sitewide backlinks are Not Dangerous: Sitewide backlinks can cause a lot of troubles. Avoid exact match anchor backlinks coming from hundreds to thousands of sitewide pages.

59. Building Links is Dangerous: With all Google updates, people start to fear even thinking of building backlinks. There are safe tactics such as content marketing, influencer outreach, quality guest blogs, product/service in return for a review, etc.

60. High link velocity will hurt your search engine ranking: There is no exact number of threshold about how many links you can make for a period of time.

61. Blog Comments, Forum signatures are bad and can hurt your rankings: This is not possible if they come from authority websites with strict moderation for spam.

62. Google doesn’t follow “nofollow links”: Nofollow attribute main purpose was to retain authority and PageRank. Google still crawls the links, but Matt Cutts said they don’t include them in their overall graph. However, nofollow links provide some SEO value.

63. No backlink with no SEO value: Co-Citations are website mentions without a hyperlink. Google looks at co-citations as a brand signal.

64. All Paid Directory Links are Bad: Not all directory listings are bad. If the website has strict moderation and is authoritative with real traffic, you can consider listing your website. Directory listing in local directories usually boosts your local rankings.

65. Rankings are All That Matters: Rankings are an important element in SEO, but the real measures of success are conversions and sales. The success of an SEO campaign cannot be judged only by rankings. Some keywords convert better than others and bring more revenue. 

66. Google Rankings are the same globally: Google search results are localized. They are a bit different, depending on your location. This trend is ongoing, as Google’s strategy is to personalize its services.

67. You Need to Rank #1: Ideally, you want to rank number one. Sometimes the resource you need to climb from the #2-3 spot is tremendous, and it is not worth it to push further for a particular keyword. You may concentrate your efforts on related long-tail keywords, which provide higher ROI.

68. Targeting bigger keywords is better.  This is usually a beginner’s mistake to start to optimize for keywords with insane searches per month. People search for long-tail keywords, which convert better. 

69. Getting your website on Google’s 1st page is good enough: A higher position on the top 10 results will deliver more clicks and traffic. The difference in click-through rates between Google’s 1st and 10th result on the 1st page is tremendous.

70. Bolded keywords affect rankings: Their purpose is only better user experience.

71. Social Media Signals Impact Directly  Search Rankings: Social signals are a necessary part of your digital marketing strategy. 

They correlate with high organic rankings but are not a complete marketing strategy. Test this myth yourself and compare social signals count for every page in your top 10 search results.

72. Social Signals Create Backlinks: Social signals created by actively participating on social media have a significant impact on where you’ll rank in Google, especially for local search, but social signals are not equal to backlinks. They have a very short lifespan, and to help you with organic rankings, they need to flow continuously. After numerous tests, we conducted that when you stop getting social signals, your rankings usually drops.

73. Google Plus is not important for SEO: Google Plus is growing rapidly. Your posts will show higher for people that have you in their circle. Google often places Google+ Local results above the “normal” organic SERPs in local search.

74. New sites do not rank well because of the “Google sandbox”: New sites can be indexed within minutes, and even could rank well in a matter of weeks after the launch.

75. Once you become #1, your job is done: Your competition doesn’t sleep. You should constantly work on your SEO performance, or sooner or later, another website will outrank you.

76. Website Speed is Not Important: site speed is one of the important ranking factors. Learn how website speed impacts search rankings.

77. SEO is not a usability issue: User experience has a huge impact on your organic rankings. Great UX leads to high CTR, time on site, and visited pages, which results in better Google rankings.

78. The higher your bounce rate, the lower your rankings: High bounce rate is not necessarily a bad thing if you are attracting the right audience and giving them exactly what they are looking for.

79. I don’t need a mobile version of my website: Do you know mobile internet usage exceeds desktop for the first time in history in 2014. Google mobile index is bigger than its desktop index. Google even started to penalize mobile unfriendly sites.

80. Black Hat SEO Does Not Work: It depends on what “work” means. A lot of black hat tactics will get you higher in the search rankings in the short-term. For the last years, Google has ended many black hat tactics and discouraged people who want easy results.

81. Google crushed private blog networks completely: The truth is there are cases when PBNs still work. But after all Google updates, it is harder, risky, and very expensive to use them for SEO. 

82. Using automated SEO tools is always black hat or spam: SEO optimization requires working with huge amounts of data, and automation tools are often a must to stay ahead of your competition.

83. You can rank easily with spam: There are people who promote black hat techniques, but the results don’t last, and it is not worth it in the long term. Furthermore, you risk a Google penalty, which will devalue all the time and resources you put into work.

84. Cloaking still works: This is an ancient technique, which is very dangerous nowadays.

85. All cloaking is bad and risky: If your intentions are honorable, then you have nothing to fear.

86. There are one-click software solutions: A few years back, and it was possible to rank easily with automation software. Now it is impossible.

87. Negative SEO doesn’t exist: It could even destroy your business, so monitor your website’s statistics.

88. Google Crushed Spam: Google’s deal with hard spam better than ever, but there is still room for improvement. The next challenge is to handle more sophisticated tactics.

89.Disavow Tool doesn’t Work: DT could save tons of time instead of removing links by hand. It may remove a manual or algorithmic penalty, especially if you react promptly. I was able to recover many of my clients with their help. 

90. Disavowing All Your Links Will Fix Your Problem: Disavow Tool is not a silver bullet. If you already have a penalty message in your Google Webmaster Tools,  you will also need to fill a reconsideration request after you clean your link profile.

91. Google penalizes sites that use the NoScript tag: John Mueller said that there is no “penalty” for using the tag and that Google ignores it in Google Webmaster Hangout (about 49 minutes  in the video)

92. Paying For Google AdWords = Higher Organic Rankings: This is pure nonsense. Google’s distinguished engineer Matt Cutts denied this myth in the next video. 

93. Adsense Helps/is Bad for Your Rankings. Adsense banners don’t help for SEO and will not hurt your rankings unless you have too many ads on your page.

94. Google spies on webmasters using Google Analytics: Google does not use your analytics to spy on you. On the other hand, competitors may find how many websites you own from your unique GA ID, which could be found in your website’s source code.

95. Google Authorship Helps SEO: Google terminated the program completely in August of 2014, and it no longer exists.

96. Google Updates happen a few times a year: Actually, Penguin runs in real-time. So don’t look at updates like a seasonal thing. 

97. Toolbar PageRank is the same as actual PageRank: Actual PageRank is constantly updated, while public PageRank is not a relevant metric anymore.

98. PageRank shows how important Google thinks your site is:  According to Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, Google is “probably not going to be updating it going forward.” Page rank was a great way to help SEOs to abuse Google algorithm buying domains with high PR. Now the toolbar PR is not regularly updated and is not a reliable metric.

99. One SEO technique will work for every website/keyword: Every SEO strategy should be created according to the industry specifics. 

100. SEO Is All You Need: While SEO is crucial, it’s only one part of the puzzle that will get traffic to your site. You need to provide an outstanding user experience and unique value.

101. SEO is something I can hand off to IT: There seems to be a perception that SEO requires some technical expertise, and since it is technical, IT can just do the work. While there is a technical component to SEO, it requires way more than only technical knowledge. Think twice before handing an entire project to IT or a web designer.

102. There are SEO “Gurus”: There are NO SEO “Gurus.” Everyone who self-proclaim himself as a “Guru” is only looking for an opportunity to rob newbies who are just starting in the business.

103. There are SEO Secrets: This myth is similar to the previous one. You can reverse engineer your competitor’s tactics. There are no secrets, just people who are looking for shortcuts to success.

104. SEO is Dead: Organic search drives 51+% of the overall traffic to websites worldwide. It is alive and kicking.

105. SEO companies can get guaranteed results: No company can guarantee 100% they can rank you for a particular keyword. There are more than 200 ranking factors, which determine your organic position.  There is no universal formula for success, and such companies should be avoided.

106. SEO is an Instant Solution: Unfortunately, SEO will not fix your search engine visibility issues by next week. Fast results only come from a PPC (pay per click) program, which will provide instant traffic.

107. SEO Takes Way Too Much Time: With the right keyword research and SEO strategy, you can get the first results in 4-12 weeks.

108. SEO is about manipulating organic results: Google becomes smarter and significantly limits these options. Manipulation techniques don’t provide long-term results.

109. SEO is too Expensive: It becomes more and more expensive in the last few years after all Google updates, which favor quality backlinks and content. It doesn’t necessarily cost an arm and a leg. Do the research and ask several SEO agencies and compare their services and prices.

110. My business is tiny. SEO isn’t worth it: If you have a small business, local SEO is the best cost-effective marketing solution. According to Forbes, investing in organic SEO is more important now than ever before.

111. I’m a local business. I don’t need SEO: Do you know 43% of total Google search queries are Local?

112. SEO is too hard for a “regular Joe: There is plenty of information from basics to PRO SEO strategies.

113. I must submit my site to Google: The oldest SEO myth. The idea that you need to submit your website to Google to appear in search results (or rank) is nonsense. Google now usually visit your new blog or post minutes to hours after it is published.

114. SEO and inbound marketing don’t mix: SEO is a marketing channel, which can be part of your traditional marketing strategy.

115. We have an inside person at Google: This is the pitch only con artists use. Google is one of the largest corporations in the world, with thousands of employees. The algorithms they use are so complex that even an inside man won’t be able to help you.

116. If You Build it, They Will Come: Build a fantastic website with exceptional content and watch the traffic roll on in. The truth is, without promotion, nobody will come.