Technical SEO: Myths and Reality

SEO promotion is an extremely important stage of work that absolutely any business operating in the online space faces in its practice. The fact is that this is the most effective way to get to the top of organic search results, thereby providing your online presence with the highest possible visibility and, as a result, page traffic. But search engine optimization itself involves solving an extremely wide range of problems, and quite diverse ones. As a result, the situation in this niche is such that there are as many opinions as there are people, and SEO itself has become overgrown with a considerable number of myths and obvious misconceptions.

All this has become extremely relevant for the so-called technical search engine optimization, that is, for all those issues that are directly related to the technical component. And this means that it is important for specialists working in this niche to have a good understanding of this issue and learn to separate myths from reality. This is what will minimize errors when performing these works and get excellent results in practice with minimal time and effort.

Our review today will be devoted to the issue of myths in technical SEO. In particular, we will talk about where such opinions come from in principle, and also highlight 10 of the most common misconceptions that still exist on the market and form the basis of the promotion strategy of many sites, but, alas, do not ultimately give the desired results. The information provided will allow you to delve deeper into this issue and eliminate obviously incorrect decisions in your search engine optimization.

Why do myths arise in technical SEO?

To learn how to identify myths and inconsistencies, including in technical SEO, it is important to understand what exactly causes such opinions. Knowing how everything works here, you will be able to identify inconsistencies as quickly as possible and avoid serious problems. In particular, myths in technical and search engine promotion most often arise as a result of the following points:

• Incorrect interpretation of this or that information from search engines. If you have already encountered SEO, then you probably know that Google and other modern search engines provide mandatory recommendations, give practical advice designed to increase the effectiveness of site promotion. But, alas, such information is not always interpreted correctly by specialists, or is completely taken out of context. As a result, myths arise that have nothing to do with reality.
• Using outdated and no longer relevant information. The fact is that search engine promotion is characterized by increased dynamism. The search engine is constantly changing its tactics, trying to prevent dishonest promotion and avoid abuse of opportunities, putting all owners of online platforms in approximately the same conditions. As a result, it may turn out that the practice that was relevant and gave excellent results just yesterday no longer works today. The owners of the sites themselves may not behave entirely honestly. Instead of adjusting their materials to current trends, they simply change the publication date in old materials, hoping that the system will not notice such a trick and will index the page.
• Increased complexity of search algorithms. Despite the fact that modern search engines provide recommendations for promotion, not all of them reveal their secrets completely. A significant share of information about how search algorithms work, alas, remains reliably closed. As a result, there may be a misunderstanding of the mechanisms and concepts, which in itself gives rise to fictions that systematically fill the gaps in knowledge.
• Accepting correlation as a cause-and-effect relationship. In practice, situations often arise when some specialists identify a certain pattern between a number of factors and higher positions in search results. And they accept this as a cause-and-effect relationship. And if it turns out that such information came from a fairly well-known and authoritative SEO specialist, then such a myth instantly spreads in thematic circles and is perceived by other people as the norm. But still, if you look into this issue more deeply, it becomes clear that such a connection for search engine promotion is an extremely rare phenomenon. The fact is that there is a huge number of variables, parameters that can interact with each other in different ways.
• Using clickbait. The fact is that a number of authors deliberately spread various myths in the field of SEO. This is done in order to attract as many people as possible to their pages. As a result, contradictory, but at the same time sensational information appears in the materials, which, as in the previous case, spreads very quickly, but, alas, it has nothing to do with reality.
• Maximum simplification of SEO principles. We have already said that search engine promotion is based on a huge number of tools, techniques, among which there are quite complex concepts that cannot be expressed in simple words. But it is precisely in an attempt to simplify that serious mistakes are made, literally distorting the information.

But, for whatever reason the mistake was made, a myth is born that a large number of people believe. As a result, incorrect information spreads even more, gains momentum, more and more specialists are led by it, the budget is spent, but we have no return on the output.

So what opinions about technical SEO can rightfully be considered myths? Now let's get acquainted with the most common points.

Technical SEO is necessary exclusively for search engines

It is impossible to say that this is a complete myth, since there is indeed some truth in it. The fact is that a well-implemented technical component of search engine promotion has a direct impact on the ranking of the site. But still, it also plays an important role for the business as a whole, improving the user experience. The fact is that the higher the quality and attractiveness of your website page, the faster and better the other sections will load, ultimately increasing the likelihood that a potential buyer:

• will want to stay on the site longer, as he will feel as comfortable as possible;
• will most likely perform one or another target action, for example, place an order, leave his contact information for feedback, ask for help from consultants;
• will appreciate the convenience of working with the site and will return to the site again and again as the need arises;
• will recommend your site to his friends, acquaintances, audience, which in the end can also, among other things, also ensure the growth of external link mass.

All this once again confirms that technical SEO is as important for ordinary users as it is for search bots.

Technical SEO — done and forgotten

Among many experts today, there is an opinion that technical SEO optimization is the work with a site that needs to be done well once, and then forget about it all. But in practice, it does not work that way. If you want your site to really work, attract an audience, and comply with current standards and trends, it is important to work on it regularly, to improve it. The fact is that the search engine will constantly improve its algorithms in an attempt to provide the best user experience when working with search, to make people return to them again and again. And if you want your site to remain at the top of the search results, you will need to adapt to all these changes. That is, technical SEO work should be carried out constantly.

A clear proof of this theory can rightfully be called the new metric from Core Web Vitals, namely Interaction to Next Paint, that is INP. It began to be used about a year ago, replacing the more outdated First Input Delay (FID) solution. The fundamental difference between these methods is that INP allows for the most comprehensive measurement of page adaptability, indicating how the user audience evaluates it.

Those specialists who have already used this metric in practice were able to see how much the site's SEO indicators have improved, thereby providing a number of advantages over competitors. It is important to understand that even if you have a truly qualified and experienced developer at your disposal, it will still be difficult to avoid failures and problems in operation. Most of them will still arise after various updates, which is basically due to the specifics of the CMS and a number of other criteria. This point will be especially relevant for large multi-page sites.

And then SEO comes to the rescue. The relevant specialists interact with developers, give a number of practical recommendations that allow you to perform all the transformations taking into account the best practices of technical promotion. Let us repeat that such work should be carried out regularly and as quickly as possible after search engines implement the next changes to their algorithms.

The robots.txt file can block the indexing of a page

This is another obvious misconception, due to the fact that not all users understand in principle why robots.txt is needed and how it is used. In particular, its main purpose is to manage the scanning of the site. That is, it tells the search bot which pages should be scanned and which should be bypassed due to prohibited access. In practice, this file is used for such guards as Googlebot, which strictly follow all the specified rules and requirements. Unfortunately, today, so to speak, "malicious" robots are also often used robots that may not follow the instructions contained in robots.txt at all.

That is, it is important to understand that even if you prohibit search bots from scanning a particular page of your site, it may still appear in the search results. That is, the guard will not be able to scan the closed page in any way, but the system will still add it to its index if an internal link to it is placed on some other page. As a result, the search engine may consider that the page was blocked in robots.txt by mistake and, as a result, use the anchor text and display it in the search results to see the content.

It is also important for you to know that the Google search engine indicates in its official documentation that the robots.txt file is not a tool for preventing the indexing of a page. Moreover, it recommends restricting access to such pages with a password or including a “head” a special meta tag “noindex”, indicating that you want to hide it from scanning and not add it to the index.

To localize a site, you should use the Lang attribute

Lang is one of the HTML attributes that allows you to set a particular language for a page. Today, it can be seen on most Internet pages. As an option, let's say you see “US” in the HTML code of a page. Well, this will not be the target country of the page, but will indicate the language used. This means that at the moment, you have a page open that is written directly in American English, although the site itself may be Chinese.

It is this feature that led to the emergence of this myth. Many SEO specialists have come to the conclusion that this attribute is used in search engines for site localization and provides a more improved ranking of such pages. But practice shows that the same Google completely ignores this attribute in its work, since the language specified in it is mostly incorrect. And at the same time, the search engine uses its own algorithms to identify the language of the page.

That is, the opinion that Lang is used to help optimize localized versions of pages is completely wrong. Moreover, a completely different attribute is used to solve this problem. As an option, it can be “hreflang”, which is embedded directly in the header or the “xhtml:link XML Sitemap” attribute. But if you have already used Lang on your site, then you do not need to delete it. In some cases, it can provide significant assistance, such as when using translation tools, accessibility, including screen readers.

Page numbering attributes are considered ranking signals

Until recently, page numbering attributes «rel='next'» and «rel='prev» were some of the required HTML tags. They were used by the Google search engine as a reliable assistant in determining the relationship between individual pages of the site. But now the situation has changed somewhat. For more than 5 years, these attributes have ceased to be used by the system as indexing instructions.

But despite this, many still think that they still play an important role for search engines. If you launched your site more than 5 years ago, then most likely you still have the attributes “rel='next” and “rel='prev” on your pages. Now you don’t have to delete them, they won’t harm the site. The only exception here is the Bing search engine. It is one of the few where these attributes are still relevant. That is, if you don’t specifically promote your site for Bing or other search engines that still support pagination attributes, then you don’t need to add them to your pages at all, waste time and effort. But if they are already there, then you don’t have to waste time deleting them, and leave everything as is. It is just important to remember that they are no longer used as ranking factors.

Outgoing links have a negative impact on SEO indicators

The concept of link mass itself, which experts often call link juice, suggests receiving values from external resources using incoming links to the site, but in this case, this very value is transmitted through outgoing links. Therefore, the conclusion is made that it is best to get as many incoming links as possible, but at the same time minimize the number of outgoing ones. But not everything is as it seems at first glance.

The fact is that if you add too many links to your site, especially if they lead to other resources that are not related to the topic of your site as a whole, then this phenomenon will certainly attract the interest of search engines. And here it may well turn out that you will cause serious harm to your site. But if the number of outgoing links is reasonable, if they are appropriate and lead to other sites in your niche, refer to them, then this will become the basis for improved ranking. Thanks to this, users will be able to delve deeper into the topic that interests them, and your site itself will be able to strengthen as an expert, authoritative one.

This is especially relevant when working with sites in YMYL niches. This includes all Internet sites that can have a significant impact on people's health, their financial stability, safety, and general well-being. A priori, modern search engines, including Google, impose quite strict and high requirements on such sites. Here, the quality of the content, its accuracy and reliability are taken into account. And if you can confirm all this with correct and expert external links, then this will be positively assessed by the search engine.

This opinion is supported by leading world experts. They point out that links leading to other sites are This is a unique opportunity for users to check other sources, make sure that the content presented on your page is correct and that it fully meets their personal needs. To enhance this effect, it is necessary to link only to thematic and authoritative resources. At the same time, they should be useful for the target audience, interesting.

Let's say that you are working with culinary pages. And here think about what will be more interesting to your readers: a link to a recipe or recommendations in boring Wikipedia or to the personal blog of Paul Bocuse? Most likely, the second option will be more preferable. And if people start following these links, this will give the search engine a fairly clear signal to promote your site to the top of the search results.

In this case, it is worth using attributes of the rel: family, namely:

1. «rel='nofollow' or rel='ugc'» to prevent link value from being passed on to external sites.
2. «rel='noopener noreferrer'», which will help avoid security issues.
3. «target='_blank'», which will help open external links in a new tab.

Page loading speed is not a ranking factor

Reducing page loading speed to minimum values is quite a complex task that requires deep knowledge, practical skills, an integrated approach, and considerable effort and time from performers. And here it would be quite reasonable to say that why bother with this at all, believing the words that this parameter has no effect on the ranking of the site. But this is a clear misconception and we strongly recommend starting work aimed at optimizing page loading speed. In particular, for desktop versions of sites, this parameter has been used as one of the key ranking factors since 2010, and for sites adapted for work with mobile devices - since 2018.

And this requirement is quite reasonable: absolutely every Internet user would like to receive answers to their questions as quickly as possible. Moreover, statistics show that waiting for a site to load for more than 2-3 seconds leads to people simply closing the page and going to competitors' sites. This means that it is in your interests to carry out the appropriate changes and make sure that your page loads as quickly as possible.

The studies that were conducted in this area showed that optimizing the page loading speed not only allows sites to occupy higher positions in search results, but also improves user satisfaction and increases the level of trust in the business. There is also a significant increase in conversion actions. One example here is the Yelp service. After they managed to increase the site loading speed from 3.25 s to 1.8 s, conversion rates increased by about 15%. A significant figure to think about implementing these works.

There is no point in adapting the site for loading from mobile devices

This is another statement that is far from the truth and absolutely does not correspond to the realities in which we find ourselves at the moment. First of all, this is due to the fact that more and more people prefer to use the Internet directly from their smartphones. All this becomes obvious even after a cursory study of the statistics of requests: there is a clear strategy for the rapid growth of mobile search requests. This means that if you want to ensure the most effective coverage of your target audience, then it is imperative to adapt your site to work with smartphones and tablets. Judge for yourself:

1. Modern users are accustomed to relying on their mobile devices in searching for useful and valuable information, entertainment content, making purchases of goods and services. Moreover, users have quite strict requirements for such sites, pointing to fast loading of mobile pages, ease of use, and thought-out navigation.
2. Minimizing bounce rates. In practice, it has been confirmed that sites that are correctly displayed and work quickly on mobile devices significantly increase the level of satisfaction on the part of the target audience, and also reduce bounce rates. This is facilitated by the presence of fairly large and noticeable buttons on the pages, readable text without the need for additional scaling, and optimized content.
3. Currently, having a version of a site adapted for work from mobile devices is one of the mandatory ranking factors. Today, this is relevant for the Google search engine, but everything indicates that in the near future this trend will become relevant for other search engines. That is, if you do not provide a mobile version of your site, then at best it will end up in the very last positions, or it will not be indexed at all, which means it will remain inaccessible to the target audience.

Let us repeat once again that having an adaptive version of the site is a must for all texts that would like to ensure stable and effective development of their site on the network. All this is relevant for absolutely any mobile search, in all languages of the world. This is what allows users to receive the most relevant and high-quality answers to their queries.

Such a transformation must be implemented even on those sites where the share of mobile users is not yet high today. Remember that the mobile-first approach is currently relevant, within the framework of which absolutely all sites, except for those that were initially sharpened exclusively for the desktop, are primarily indexed in versions oriented to work with mobile devices.

HTTPS is no longer required

HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is a secure hypertext transfer protocol. It provides encrypted and secure communication between the user and the site itself. And if you think that HTTPS is no longer important, then this is a deliberately wrong opinion. This protocol should be implemented by absolutely all sites, because it is one of the key signals for ranking. This opinion was confirmed during months of testing. A secure and encrypted connection is a signal for ranking algorithms.

Also, we must not forget about user trust. Thus, HTTPS is a guarantee of secure data transfer for visitors, which has already become a generally accepted standard today. If you do not use this protocol in practice, the search engine will display the message "Not secure" next to the address of your site. Moreover, the system will additionally ask the user whether he wants to open such a page, because it is unreliable, that is, it can be dangerous. As a result, people will simply not visit HTTP sites even before the site loads.

Let us repeat once again that the presence of HTTPS is one of the mandatory criteria for Google during the Page Experience assessment.

XML maps should be used only when working with large sites

This is another obvious misconception. An XML map is a file that contains a complete list of links to pages that you identify as important for your business and would like search bots to pay attention to scanning them first. This will be relevant for absolutely all sites, regardless of how many pages they have. This will ensure the solution of 2 key tasks:

1. Significant assistance to search engines in searching and indexing the necessary pages of the site. This is a guarantee that none of the pages that are really important to you will be missed. This is especially true for those sites where it was not possible to implement the most correct interlinking, where there is not enough external link mass.
2. Formation of search bots about the fact that new pages have been added to your site or changes have been made to existing ones. Thanks to this, their scanning and addition to the index will be significantly accelerated. To implement such an idea, it will be necessary to use the special attribute “lastmod”. Its implementation will be especially relevant on news sites. It is for them that a separate version of the XML map – News sitemap is currently provided.

Let us repeat that the creation of a high-quality sitemap and its subsequent sending to search engines — these are the works that need to be implemented even on small sites, where technical resources are quite limited. Moreover, the works themselves are quite simple and fast. To implement them, you can use a fairly wide range of SEO tools, special plugins for CMS. These are the solutions that will help you automatically create a site map. You simply indicate which pages you would like to add for indexing. And such services can also be used to check the existing XML map, making sure how correctly the work is organized here.

Additional recommendations

As you can see, today there are quite a lot of obvious myths and misconceptions in technical SEO. Unfortunately, they can seriously harm the promotion of your site, leading to the fact that time and money will simply be wasted. Therefore, it is important to very carefully check all those technologies and methods that you plan to use in practice in promoting your sites. You must understand that those methods that were effective relatively recently may already be completely outdated today. Moreover, among them there are those that can cause serious damage.

And the only thing you can do in this situation is to constantly monitor current trends and implement them in your practice as quickly as possible. To do this, it is important for you to trust only reliable and proven sources, such as the official representative of the Google search engine. Here in the search center there is a separate block in which current changes are regularly published. When using other resources, it is important to carefully check all this information before launching it into practical application. You must understand that even authoritative articles written several years ago may no longer be relevant today, so the information presented in them must be additionally double-checked.

Summing up

Technical SEO is a really important component in the successful promotion of a website in search results and its presence in the online environment as a whole. If you approach the implementation of such tasks without preliminary preparation, comprehensive development, you can simply waste your entire budget, lose valuable time and not get the desired result. And one of the reasons for this may be blindly following various narratives, among which there may well be myths. Therefore, approach the promotion of the site professionally, carefully and trust only reliable sources.

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