17 SEO Myths You Should Abandon in 2015

By: Eddy Goldberg
Published: December 24th, 2014

"SEO has changed so much in the past several years that many marketers aren't sure what's outdated, what's important, what will actually move the needle, and what's simply wasted effort."

That's from the introduction to "17 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2015," a guide from Hubspot, and a follow-up to their similar report looking ahead 2014.

Sound familiar? Does it hit close to home? You're not alone.

The purpose of the guide, says author Rebecca Churt, is to "to point out all of the most common myths and assumptions about how SEO works and debunk them for you, so you're not wasting a single moment on things that simply don't matter for SEO in 2015."

The report consists of 17 mistaken SEO beliefs, sourced from SEO experts both within and outside Hubspot's team. To whet your appetite, here are half a dozen of those 17 myths.

• Myth #1: Setting up Google Authorship can increase my search visibility and clickthrough rate.
• Myth #3: More links are better than more content.
• Myth #5: SEO is all about ranking.
• Myth #8: Keyword optimization is THE key to SEO.
• Myth #14: Microsites and other domains I own that link or redirect back to my site will help my SEO.
• Myth #17: SEO and inbound marketing don't mix.

The takeaway. In her conclusion, Churt sums it up thusly:

"If you can take one thing away from this guide, it's this: More than anything else, SEO is about the overall experience for a searcher, and that experience starts the moment they enter a search query. The better their experience with you - from your SERP