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A solo episode debunking the three most persistent SEO myths that waste marketer time and budget — and what the data actually shows.
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INTRO Welcome to the Ask Irfan edition of the SIA Business Podcast. In each Ask Irfan episode, your host, Irfan, will be answering questions you asked and even questions you never asked.
Irfan: Hi, everyone. This is Syed Irfan Ajmal and I'm your host at the SIA Business Podcast. And today, I will be doing a very special episode. So let's get started. Now, in this inaugural Ask Irfan episode, I would like to talk about the top three misconceptions people have when it comes to SEO. Okay.
The first misconception that I notice is that a lot of people think that SEO is dead and that's wrong because the old type of SEO, where, you would create a bunch of links without much effort, by spamming blogs and by spamming discussion forums or, sprinkling a lot of keywords in your articles.
That type of SEO is certainly dead and it has been dead for a very long time and well, thank God for that. The new type of SEO has been in action and in operation for a long time and it's actually alive and well and thriving.
This new type of SEO is doing well because Google has done a lot to improve its algorithms so that it can reward the better content in at least most industries.
So, I mean, I don't want anyone of you who is listening to this episode to come back to me and say, "Hey, Irfan, you're saying that, you know, the old type of SEO is dead, but, I have a friend in such and such industry and, he has very bad content and very bad backlinks and all that and he's still doing well."
I mean, it is possible for that kind of SEO to do well in, in some industries and in some geographical locations. But, I don't think, and a lot of the other experts don't think that that kind of SEO is sustainable or that it will stay successful for a very long time.
So like I said, SEO is not dead, but the old kind of SEO, it's dead in a lot of industries in geographical locations and it's certainly on, on its deathbed in a lot of other industries. So what you want to do is that you shouldn't ignore SEO, but make sure that you are not doing the old type of spammy, low-quality SEO.
The second misconception about SEO that people often have is that it's all about writing search engine optimized content and some associated misconceptions under the same umbrella are that "Oh SEO is just about, adding some keywords in your articles or, it's just about adding some keywords in your title and meta description and that's it.
So that's wrong as well. SEO, in my opinion, is actually very much dependent on backlinks and, that's not just my opinion. I mean, it is my opinion, but it's actually backed by research and data.
And I will actually include links to some of these relevant data pieces and research reports to explain why I think and why so many other experts and practitioners think that backlink is actually the most important part of your SEO campaign.
There are over 200 factors which Google takes into account while considering your site for getting ranked in its search engine result pages. But I would say that like backlinking is probably like, its importance is like, maybe 70 to 80%.
It is going down over time, but that process is very slow. And the reason why that is is that... I would like to explain it with an analogy, actually. So let's say, in real life if you want to do business with someone, what we often do, a lot of us is that we will review the company and the service provider.
We will review their brochure, their service offerings, their prices and all that. But then we will also maybe ask someone else about them, you know, like a friend, a family member, a colleague, a neighbor, blah, blah, blah. Right?
(04:10) So in the same way when Google is considering whether it should rank you for a particular keyword in its SERPs, it does take into consideration your, website speed and bounce rate and you know whether your website is optimized for mobile or not, and your content, obviously, which keywords are you using, blah, blah, blah.
But the factor that it still gives a lot of importance too, like maybe you know 70% or 80% is backlinks. So backlinking is basically Google trying to, you know, it's basically checking if the backlinks your website has got, are from, say CNN or BBC or whether they're from some, you know, very unknown, maybe a low-quality small website. Okay.
So if you are a fitness app and you have got backlinks from say, you know, Health.com, and maybe Psych Central or you know, Mayo Clinic or something, then, that's good news for you.
And that's a positive signal for Google, right? Because it can see that you guys are legit and you guys deserve to be given good rankings because it can see that there are other websites vouching for you. Okay.
So when we speak about backlinks, it's basically other websites mentioning your URL, linking to your content, linking to your website. Okay. So long story short, SEO is not just about writing optimized content. It's not about, you know, putting in tons of keywords in your articles.
It's about making sure that you do outreach. Whether it's influencer outreach or media outreach or blogger outreach or all of these and other techniques in order to earn backlinks.
Okay. So rather than building backlinks, which basically means, in my dictionary, to go to a blog and write a comment and hope that you get a backlink from that site when they approve your comment, or going to a discussion forum and then making sure that you know your website URL is mentioned at the bottom of your post or your signature. So that's building backlinks, which is surely, pretty bad.
What you want to do is to earn backlinks. What will help you do that is something that we will discuss in a future episode in more detail. But simply speaking, you want to create epic content and then you want to do outreach, build relations online with other influencers, bloggers, journalists, writers, website owners, blah, blah, blah, in order to convince them and persuade them to link to your content. Okay.
Now, the third and the final misconception is that SEO is cheap. Okay. Now, remember that it's a very time-consuming process. If you are doing high-quality work, that type of SEO that I told you about, you know, high quality in-depth well-researched long-form content in a variety of formats...
... whether it's you know, articles, whether it's you know, evergreen guides, whether it's infographics, whether it's mapographics and then doing the outreach, which is actually like, 4 times the effort that will take you to create the content.
So what I'm saying is that if you are creating an article which may take you 10 hours. In order to see good ROI from it in terms of SEO and content marketing, you want to spend, you know, 40 hours on promoting that article that took you 10 hours to write. Okay.
So you know, it's not cheap doing this kind of work, quality work where there are actual people doing the work and they are making an effort, reaching out, building relations, doing research to find ideas which can go viral or which may be something that other websites would be interested in and which they would like to link to. There is a lot of work involved.
So this type of SEO is very, very high-quality SEO. And as you have heard the saying, if you're paying peanuts you will get monkeys or something like that.
So you're better off to do maybe fewer months of SEO each year, I will say if you don't have the budget for instance, rather than hiring someone cheap and you know, letting them do bad quality work, which will actually harm your website in near future.
So you are better off to invest in high-quality SEO work even if that means that you will not be able to do SEO 12 months every year, but rather 10 months every year or 9 months or something like that.
So quality work, it's never cheap. Now I'm not saying that you find the most expensive company which offers SEO in your region or in your LinkedIn network — that's not what I'm saying.
Obviously, shortlist a few companies, but ask them questions about what is it that they will be doing and how they will be doing it. A lot of the SEO companies, the reason they are very cheap is that they are not doing a lot. I mean, blog commenting or forum commenting.
They might be using like, an automated software which builds like tons of spammy backlinks from gambling websites or Chinese or Russian websites. Nothing against China or Russia, but all I'm saying is that if you have an English website, 90% of your backlinks being from Chinese or Russian sites or any other non-English website is not going to look good for you in the eyes of Google and Bing and other search engines.
So yeah, shortlist companies and then ask them a few questions, try to speak to a few of their old clients. And keep in mind that it's not cheap. So, like I said, to give you a summary, number one, "SEO is dead" is the number one misconception people have.
The second misconception is that writing search engine optimized the content or sprinkling a lot of keywords in your article and the title and the meta description is all there is to SEO. Or that creating those bad quality, spammy backlinks through forums or blogs or you know, web 2.0 properties, blah, blah, blah, that is all that there is to SEO. That's the second myth.
And like I said, you want to invest in high-quality backlinks by reaching out to the media, by reaching out to the influencers and bloggers, by building relations, and creating high-quality content in a variety of formats. That's what you want to do.
And lastly, as I said, the third myth is that SEO is cheap. It's not. If you want quality work if you want SEO that will benefit your websites for months and years to come, you want to invest some amount in high-quality work. Okay? So that's it.
This is the end of the very first Ask Irfan episode of this podcast. I would love to know if you have any questions that I can answer in future Ask Irfan episodes. And that's it from my side.
I will make sure, like I said, that I add links to relevant resources and research studies and all that in the description of this podcast episode. Thank you so much for listening and speak to you soon. Bye.
OUTRO Got any questions in content marketing, SEO, startups, or something totally different, or weird, or fun? Share them with us and we will answer them in the next Ask Irfan episode.