Given the internet has existed for nearly 30 years now, there is a lot of history to consider when trying to appeal to various audiences and demographics. Nevertheless, the internet of today looks nothing like the internet of the early 1990s – meaning that your strategies and approaches are going to be fundamentally different than those of yesteryear.

Even in recent memory, many strategies for appealing to audiences via search engines have become obsolete – or even worse, were never true in the first place. So many search engine related strategies have little to no value yet remain at the core of advice given to select audiences.

Today, we’ll explore 4 specific SEO legends that aren’t even close to the truth in terms of modern search-related organic marketing principles.

SEO Isn’t Consistently Required

One of the worst – and most damaging – legends floating around about SEO is that it is merely an activity that requires a bit of initial investment. Whether it is because a brand manages to generate immense popularity through a single piece of content or puts in the appropriate initial effort to begin ranking, some then believe that their work is done.

If you’re not pinging search engines consistently with content and optimizing strategies to constantly be in line with algorithm changes, then that initial effort will ultimately result in nothing. Any initial gains will fade if you believe SEO is a one-time effort that can subsequently be abandoned.

Search Engines Only Care About New Content

SEO is often focused on as a game revolving around new content. This is important, as the more fresh content you generate, the more opportunities you have to rank in select search results. However, some have taken this to mean that search engines only care about new content; that after some time, older content will become worthless.

This simply isn’t true. As long as users are finding the content in question relevant when featured in search results, older content continues to deliver results. In many ways, it can deliver even more potent results: it has had more time to be assessed by the masses and feature in search results, after all.

Social Media Improves SEO

The hype surrounding social media marketing is real for brands that want to be seen by people. However, too much hype often leads to legends. Does social media actually boost SEO performance? In this case, the answer is a bit more complicated.

For Google, absolutely not: social media does not directly impact search rankings. However, other lesser-known search engines (most notably, Bing) do factor social signals into their search rankings. If your strategy revolves around visibility in Google, however, then this is yet another legend.

Context Has Surpassed Keywords

Given the evolution of search over the past few years, many remark on how intuitive search engine algorithms have become. Unfortunately, this has also led to people assuming that keyword research is no longer necessary; that search engines can understand contextual meaning without the need for keyword analysis.

Search engines do in fact still utilize keywords for context and brands absolutely must use keyword research in order to be SEO-friendly. If you’re pinging search engines with content aimed toward a particular niche but not focusing it at niches where visibility is optimized, then your efforts will likely fall flat.

Before embracing conventional wisdom, always be sure to check your sources. This is especially true with SEO: when you accept a particular legend as fact, you just might undermine your entire SEO strategy.