If you’re in charge of managing a website, you’re probably always looking for ways to make your site smarter, faster and more relevant to users so it ranks higher in organic search results. Though, due to the unpredictable reputation of SEO, there have been many SEO myths circulating around how to achieve higher organic rankings.
To help your brand succeed in 2020 by optimizing your website for greater organic visibility, here’s the truth about the top four SEO myths.
SEO myth #1 – XML sitemaps automatically improve your search rankings
The XML sitemap’s main job is to help search engines crawl and index the pages of a website. Search engines especially like to see fresh pages added to the sitemap, as it indicates that the website is up-to-date and may be more relevant to online users. The real question here is, does the XML sitemap help boost a website’s search rankings?
According to the Google Webmaster Central Blog[1], an XML sitemap does not have a direct effect on the rankings of a website. Submitting a sitemap helps ensure search engines like Google know about all the important URLs on a website. This can be especially useful when certain web pages are not easily discoverable by crawlers. To put into layman’s terms, an XML sitemap will augment Google’s crawl and discovery process and may result in an increased presence and visibility of a website, but it will not automatically improve a site’s organic ranking.
SEO myth #2 – Too many keywords = poor organic rankings
There’s been buzz around the SEO industry for years when it comes to keywords, more specifically, keyword density. How many keywords are too many? Will Google penalize my website for over-optimizing it with keywords?
Despite what many online forums and