Top 12 SEO Myths to Avoid for Better Ranking (2025)

SEO strategies for your website or blog are mandatory to get organic search traffic. Now, let us bust some top SEO myths to avoid that hinder your organic growth.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to algorithms used to rank websites and blogs on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). For businesses and bloggers, this means increasing your visibility on SERPs.

Why is SEO crucial if your website can reach SERPs with relevant keywords?

We know that a user only goes up to the first ten results or the first page of SERPs. Also, 99.9% of the time, the users get what they seek within the first few results.

Your business website or blog will have something that an audience needs. But will your website be visible in the first few results?

Reaching this spot is a milestone for your business. It is a pilgrimage that requires dedication and patience.

The concept of SEO came in the 90s when search engines acted like directories to locate websites. As more businesses and blogs came up, listing websites became a challenge.

We humans use various factors to decide on something that we want. Soon, search engines started getting trained with similar algorithms.

Now, when you search for something, such as a sports store, the first non-sponsored result will be the website of a top-notch sports company with positive reviews, excellent customer service, high-quality products, and more.

You may come across myths and conflicting opinions when making your website SEO-friendly. In this article, we will learn how to spot SEO myths and debunk some.

Common SEO Myths to Ignore

Implementing SEO is a stepwise process. Planning for on-page, off-page, and technical ways improves your authority as a trustworthy brand.

However, one faces a lot of SEO myths when planning an SEO campaign. The pressure to reach the top makes many fall into this trap of taking shortcuts.

Every quality SEO parameter has a myth or contradictory statement associated with it. Here is where a lot of new bloggers and business owners need clarification.

SEO is a slow and organic process that takes time to yield expected returns. It gives rise to apprehensions of whether you are going in the right direction.

Do not worry. We are here to bust some common SEO Myths to avoid in 2025. So when you plan your SEO campaign, you can have a clear mind without any doubts.

1. New Content is Necessary for Better Ranking

One of the common SEO Myths that rakes our mind is providing new content all the time. However, some saturated areas focus on the same content in new forms. Cookery, Tutorials, etc., are the best examples of this.

This SEO myth is due to Google’s Fresh Content Update, which has been in use since 2011. Thus, the most recent and up-to-date content has higher priority in SERPs. Freshness of content is mistaken for “new” content in many cases.

SEO metrics look for the time-relevance of content. This is evident from how Google provides “Top Stories.” Here, one can get the latest happenings based on our search queries.

Everyone can’t come up with unique content in new domains all the while. But you need to focus on at least one thing that may be lacking in existing content.

Assume you are a blogger sharing recipes.

Your blog was once at the top spot. But now it is getting replaced with blogs having more variations to your recipe.

You try one of your signature dishes again, and this time, find a hack to reduce cooking time. To gain back your old position, you can add this hack.

If none of the new blogs discuss this hack, your blog will rank high again, thanks to fresh content.

A key SEO takeaway is to keep your content up-to-date with relevant information.

2. Low Volume Keywords are a Waste of Time

Most SEO pundits claim to shortlist keywords that have a decent search volume. Today, the market scenario focuses on taking the road less traveled.

Low-volume keywords are those having a search volume of below 250 per month. We know to target high-volume or high-traffic attracting keywords in keyword research.

However, including a broad range of keywords increases organic traffic. Users looking for a blog or business develop their own versions of keyword combinations.

A keyword or keyphrase with low traffic can trend and attract high traffic in the near future.

If your website, blog, business pages, social media pages, etc., cover all ranges of relevant keywords, you have all it takes to shine.

Assume you have a business providing skincare products.

One of your product offerings deals with those who have coconut allergies.

Adding keywords like “nut-free” or adding specific ingredients as keywords can cover a small yet significant target group.

1. Remember that low-volume keywords need to be relevant to your domain.
2. Low-volume keywords are helpful in targeting specialized niches in your audience.

Looking for a broad spectrum of keywords is never a waste of time.

3. SEO is a One-Time Practice

A lot of digital marketers and self-proclaimed SEO experts spread words like “Pay Rs. xxx and your website will always appear at the top,” “SEO package one time at Rs. xxx,” etc. SEO is one-time work is another SEO myth to avoid.

Anything that mentions SEO as a one-time campaign to reach the top will never get you to the top.

SEO as a process is laborious, and it involves several steps.

• One must conduct market research and understand the audience.
• Then, you must research and gather a list of keywords with varying search volumes. Use these keywords sufficiently in all content that you provide.
• Finally, you must promote and market your content across all online platforms.

SEO does not stop here. It is an iterative and continuous process.

As we have seen, you must update your content relevant to the time and improve your recognition.

Maintaining your brand quality is never a one-time effort. It requires continuous efforts to provide quality content and keep up your authority.

Your offline practices, responsiveness to queries, feedback inclusions, etc., are important SEO metrics.

You will see the results of SEO only after a few months or a few years. Even then, your efforts to strive and ensure quality must not go down. SEO must be a way of life you adopt upon entering the online world.

4. SEO is About Producing Quality Content

• A prime ranking factor for search engines using SEO algorithms is quality content.

Some digital marketers assure you a good spot in SERPs with innovative content alone.

Bloggers and businesses develop websites with rich, catchy content and well-researched keywords. They assume their content will reach their target audience on the Internet anyway.

Such SEO myths have brought the downfall of many even before they see any results.

Whether you have a blog, a small startup venture, a local shop, or a multinational business conglomerate, you must put enough effort into marketing your business.

Without marketing, search engines can never calculate the quality of your brand. Your quality shows in how you plan your marketing campaigns.

A Google My Business page, online classifieds, social media accounts for businesses, etc., are free ways to increase your visibility. Regularly posting updates and asking for feedback through those platforms shows your credibility.

Creating groups on social media and discussion threads, discount or clearance sales, etc., helps gain more organic followers.

With such tactics, you signal the search engine that you not only have quality content. You show your efforts to increase your visibility in the online world.

You have organic ways for people to know about you properly and then choose to see your content.

5. LSI Keywords are Not a Crucial SEO Element

Earlier, search engines indexed keywords from search queries with millions of documents hosted on the web. Web pages that match these keywords get listed on SERPs.

But with increasing competition to reach the top spots, search engines came up with smarter algorithms to prioritize quality content over spam and obsolete pages.

Today, Google’s algorithms are powered by Artificial Intelligence(AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

• AI and ML bots read through content to list semantically relevant content, i.e., that is meaningful to satisfy user queries.

Be sure to include Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords in your keyword research. LSI keywords have semantic relevance or similar meanings to your focus keywords.

You can avoid keyword stuffing through LSI keywords. Search engines check for a minimum number of occurrences of your focus keywords based on your content length. But these additions need to be organic.

Trying to force-fit focus keywords in your content can blacklist your website. To avoid this, adding LSI keywords signals to the search engines for quality content.

Learn to ignore SEO myths that state to ignore LSI keywords. Don’t ignore these keywords if you are targeting an audience across geographies.

You must be aware of how English terms vary across continents.

Assume you have a blog giving home-cleaning tips.

You partner with a few companies selling products relevant to your topics.

One post involves sorting garbage. We know garbage bins are also called trash cans, waste bins, rubbish bins, etc.

Including such words across your blog post can help reach users searching in many ways.

6. Keyword Density Improves SEO Ranking

The words users type in the search bar form the focus keywords to list documents on SERPs. Keyword density refers to the percentage of the number of times a keyword occurs to the total word count.

• Ideally, you must maintain a keyword density of 2-2.5%.

Google uses the popular indexing technique called TF-IDF when indexing matching documents.

Term Frequency – the count of occurrences or sights of a word in a document.

Inverse Document Frequency – the inverse of the number of words in all matching documents.

A document with a high TF-IDF value has more occurrences of the focus keywords. This ideally means it matches a user’s query keywords.

So, can this metric give you a chance to rank higher? This is a huge SEO myth.

• If high TF-IDF is our target, we can achieve this easily with keyword stuffing. However, we know that keyword stuffing is an SEO penalty.

Today, search engine crawlers use advanced AI and ML algorithms to understand meanings. Although we must maintain keyword density, force-fitting words to reach targets is wrong.

As a healthy practice, include your focus keywords in the first 100 and last 100 words. They must appear once in every 550 words and at least in 4 sub-headings.

7. Social Signals Are Not a Ranking Factor

When you look for a particular service or product, you check for its brand. This is because the brand with a higher reputation is preferred. Why is this so?

A brand builds its reputation on consumer satisfaction. The higher the positive consumer ratings, the higher its authority.

• Google looks for Experience-Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness (EEAT) metrics when filtering quality content.

You or your brand must establish itself as a market leader in your domain. Only then will your blog or business website reach the first page of SERPs.

It happens through social signals like follower count on websites and online pages. Interactions on peer blogs or forums like Quora also establish you as a domain expert.

Many people suggest skipping these in the SEO process. They see socializing in your peer circle as a waste of time.

Those who have made it to the top of SERPs today will definitely bust this as a myth.

Without interactions on social media, no business can gain followers today.

Here is where the concept of going “Live” is gaining popularity.

Some of the top ways to signal your social presence are:

1. Having social media pages for blogs or businesses.
2. Targeting organic followers and increasing this number.
3. Creating groups on Facebook, Threads on X, and Instagram.
4. YouTube channels and relevant videos promoting your content.
5. Commenting on top blogs in your domain to get backlinks.

8. Backlinks themselves can Boost Your Ranking

This is a classic example of a high-quality backlink.

Let us assume you are a small business.

You want to promote your products through a popular affiliate blogger.

This blogger has a high followers on his blog and social media accounts.

A post he makes with links to your product pages gets you a sudden traffic spike and purchases.

Here is an example of a bad-quality backlink.

Consider another example, assuming you are a blogger.

You wish to promote your blog by attaching your blog’s links in places attracting high traffic.

You get an opportunity to place your cookery blog’s link on a website with fashion blogs. Both of them are completely different domains.

This page has high traffic, but the number of viewers who would come to see recipes from a fashion blog is very low.

From these examples, you can understand that quality matters over backlink quantity. It means that traffic to your blog/business website must come from hotspots of organic views.

Many bloggers blindly follow SEO Myths. Some of them are – the number of backlinks decides their ranking quality, getting backlinks from hook or crooked, etc.

They resort to buying bulk backlinks from portals like Fiverr or freelancers, only to get blacklisted by Google.

Quality backlinks come from the reputation you develop for your brand. Backlinks must come from your domain’s top portals, affiliates, or websites. They must be trustworthy and SEO-friendly themselves.

9. Google Sandbox Puts New Website in Dark Mode

SEO is an organic and long-term process. Your website will get a small chance of visibility after months or even years.

A sandbox literally refers to an isolated environment with no influences from outside.

There is a myth that Google has a sandbox-like environment to place new websites. Websites stay there for a period before they show results.

However, it is not proven that websites actually reside in a sandbox. Such SEO Myths exist because the process of coming to the top results takes time.

But what we know is, new content takes time to get quality clearance from the target audience. This happens when more viewers frequent your website. It can also happen through recommendations and referrals.

As a new business owner or blogger, you must keep calm and ensure that these SEO myths to avoid.

The beauty is that most SEO myths almost appear true. Many experts come up with their own theories because the algorithm is not visible.

You must trust the SEO process and let your content work.

Focus on,

• Keyword research,
• Updates algorithms,
• Content creation, and
• Promotion.

Then, repeat the process iteratively with zero expectations.

Rethink how you look for a blog or a business before trusting it. List down the parameters that come to your mind.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and see how your website is faring.

10. Google Ads Helps Improve Ranking

Many businesses have a broad digital marketing portfolio. They use online advertising for their business to get quick visibility.

Advertising with Google Ads is the most preferred mode of online advertising. Ads suggested by Google are relevant to our search query history.

For this reason, many bloggers and businesses partner with Google Ads to earn revenue from ads. Conversely, they also publish their own ads with Google.

• Pay Per Click (PPC),
• Cost Per Click (CPC),

are some strategies for earning through advertising.

Google Ads considers elements like the time zone of a visitor. They also check if a user is new or returning to a website.

Based on these strategies, different ads of the same brand go to different types of visitors. For such reasons, Ads with Google are like a shortcut to get organic traffic.

Does that mean paid Ads get you a chance to improve your SEO? Please ignore SEO myths like these that contradict the purpose of quality content.

Paid Ads are only a means of promoting your business. However, such campaigns are short-lived. So you need to renew your ads with recurring payments.

In fact, such paid campaigns may attract spam that can harm your website. Despite having quality content, such activities can cause your website to get blocked.

Advertising through Google Ads is purely your choice. But this doesn’t influence your SEO score.

11. Domain Age is a Ranking Factor

Out of 200 ranking factors, domain age is a measure of a brand’s credibility and authority. This theory was established by some SEO experts in the late 2000s.

Websites from different domains can provide similar information. There is a theory that domains registered earlier get higher priority.

• Does that mean only old or aged domain names get prioritized? Of course not.

Many started falling for this myth and bought pre-owned or aged domain names. This is not a good practice.

More than domain age, it is relevance that matters for your blog and brand.

Evidence shows that search engines look for the last crawled time and the last linked time by another website. These factors determine the relevance of an age-old domain to current times.

I have already covered the topic of choosing relevant domain names. I have suggested some best practices for choosing a relevant domain name.

Bonus points for you – if you could get your brand name or brand domain-related keywords in your domain.

Search engines consider unique domain names, the freshness of content, and updated details like contact information, privacy laws, etc.

You may take the help of domain name generator tools for unique domains.

12. Local SEO Boosts Our Organic Ranking

If you have started a new venture, your first targets must be those in your immediate locality. Their reviews and feedback can steer your business to a global audience. This is the crux behind local SEO.

• Having a Google Business page or a directory listing on classified websites like JustDial, Sulekha, etc., makes your business visible to those in your locality.

Queries relating to area-specific businesses list such business directory results at the top of the search results.

Having customer reviews displayed in your business profiles can grow your business. When locals love and support a business, you can target a wide range of customers worldwide.

But not everyone can have profiles suited for Local SEO.

Take the case of blogging. It is definitely a money-making profession.

Blogging grows with traffic, just like any other business. But it does not make sense to include a “business page” or get customer reviews and ratings for your blog.

Does that mean online ventures without local SEO cannot rank high? This is among the silliest of SEO Myths.

There are various other ways to increase your visibility and promote your brand.

1. In the above case, bloggers have social media pages and groups to get reviews from their readers.
2. Their blog website will send notification emails to subscribers on new features, etc.

The key to promoting any brand or business is to target the right audience in your locality or globally.

How can I Overcome These SEO Myths?

So far, we have learned how to spot SEO myths from many self-proclaimed SEO experts.

Most of these come from baseless theories. Even though Google specifies its main SEO metrics, its algorithm is still invisible.

New bloggers and business people can’t understand why their websites are ranking low. So, how do we evaluate our SEO performance?

1. Listen Carefully and Stay up-to-date with Algorithm Updates

Google provides regular updates and release notes on the same.

Updates on Google Analytics, Google Search Core Algorithm, Google Keyword Planner, etc., are some areas to observe.

You will be using these tools often in your SEO activities.

• Focus on how Google evaluates EEAT metrics. Soon, Google may add another metric to these, which can affect the ranking schema.

Many blogs on SEO cover these topics and summarize the latest updates. While most of them are trustworthy, it is best to check them on the official websites.

Press notes from the official pages of Google reach you sooner than other blogs.

So you have a chance to implement updates sooner on your websites. The sooner you align with updated metrics and algorithms, the faster your chances of ranking higher.

2. Choose your SEO Expert (or Agency) Carefully

When you outsource your digital marketing to an agency, analyze their SEO scores.

Get answers to these before zeroing in on an SEO expert:

1. When was their first website launched? What was the domain?
2. What were their promotional strategies? Check their social media history since inception and track follower growth.
3. Does their website or page still come under “Sponsored” tags?
4. How are they addressing SEO quality and busting myths?
5. Are they suggesting bogus methods to reach high sooner?

We, at Raj Softech Solutions, have the best SEO plans to assess and implement SEO. Many plans suitable for bloggers and all kinds of businesses.

Even when you get an agency to work on your SEO, know all changes made, possible penalties, etc.

Thus, you must be the prime head directing and controlling all your SEO elements.

3. Always Apply the Knowledge and Keep Experimenting

Adapting continuously to the trends is necessary to stay in the rank you have achieved.

Whether you do your own SEO or outsource it, it is an iterative process.

1. You must keep monitoring the traffic share, trending keywords, competitor growth, etc.
2. Look for new opportunities to attract high-quality backlinks. Guest posting and commenting on top portals without spam are great hacks.
3. Learn and explore tools that help you check your content quality. Do regular checks to see if your content meets SEO standards.
4. Keep experimenting with new and innovative ways to provide content for your audience.

A small yet significant improvement can make you jump high up to the first page of SERPs.

However, it must be something new and unique. Joining a trend doesn’t necessarily mean you get a high rank.

So be careful in evaluating SEO myths and trust your process.

FAQ on SEO Myths to Avoid in 2025