SEO has been around for so many years that it should be easy to figure out what you should and shouldn’t do, right?
I wish that were the case!
The thing about SEO is that it’s constantly evolving. Not only does that mean a lot of the old information is inaccurate, but it also means there are a lot of misconceptions out there as anyone can create a blog and write about SEO, even if they are not experts.
Here are 7 lies about SEO that you probably believe:
Lie #1: It’s good to let authority sites republish your content
Typically, when an authority site that’s bigger than yours republishes your content, it is a good thing. You get a link back, and you generate traffic and maybe even sales.
The issue with having your content republished is that it creates duplicate content. Even if that authority site links back to you, search engines like Google will rank the authority site above yours. What’s even worse is that you can potentially get hit by a Panda penalty.
Just look at the KISSmetrics blog. We got hit by a Panda penalty for this.
As you can see from the graph above, we saw a 29% drop in traffic because we let authority sites republish our content.
Nonetheless, this is still a great tactic to leverage if you can get authority sites to follow one rule. They need to use a canonical tag that points back to your URL. This is the only way to ensure you don’t get penalized for duplicate content.
