Everyone is competing to publish SEO-optimized content, which is a no-brainer, since SEO decides which content ranks the highest in search engines. That being said, its importance in the digital world has led to the spread of numerous myths that may mislead you on your way. The fact that Google’s algorithms are always changing may make it hard to keep up, as well.

So, without further ado, let’s get into the most popular SEO myths and the truth about them.

Despite what many SEO tools are telling you to do, keyword stuffing is a no-no. Yes, using the necessary keywords helps the searcher find your content faster, so it’s helpful to them. 

However, there’s no magical number of keyword stuffing that ensures that your content will rank higher than its counterparts. In fact, overusing the keywords in unnatural ways can affect your ranking. So, try to use different keywords in natural contexts and write how you speak.

A common misconception is that older domains rank higher, which has led people to buy older domains, thinking that it’ll make a difference. However, Google has officially stated that it doesn’t affect ranking whatsoever.

What may affect your ranking is site and backlink age because one typically leads to another. Yet, if your site is pretty old but no other site linked back to it, it won’t rank high.

While it may sound reasonable that social signals, or social media shares, help you rank higher, that’s not the case or at least not directly. The reason is that social signals are pretty easy to manipulate, so Google doesn’t automatically think that content with plenty of social signals is valuable.

Nonetheless, organic social signals help content get more exposure, and more exposure may lead to more backlinks, which helps content rank high.