SEO practices that have no justification in 2020/2021

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Myths in the SEO industry arise just like in any other field. They often contain some truth. Their source is usually outdated SEO information and established practices that may not necessarily apply in 2020 and 2021.

I have prepared a short review of such practices. Their selection was subjective, and the arguments very objective.

Contents
SEO Myth: Title cannot exceed 60 characters
SEO Myth: Description cannot exceed 160 characters
SEO Myth: External links should absolutely be nofollow
SEO Myth: Links to our site should be loaded with keywords
Summary
SEO Myth: Title cannot exceed 60 characters
First, Google truncates titles based on their actual pixel length. The standard 600 pixels can hold a different number of characters than 60 - this is an approximate value.

Secondly, in addition to desktop results, there are also mobile devices. Different screen widths mean that different length titles will be displayed.

Third, Google may - for various reasons - display a title different from the one given in the title tag.

So what can we do to avoid having to change all titles every 2 weeks?:

It is worth following White Hat SEO, i.e. creating titles that are good for users, not search engines.
It's best to place the most important words at the beginning to avoid them being cut off, regardless of the changing rules.
Titles should not be too short - they could then be replaced by those automatically selected by the search engine. It is better to exceed the conventional barrier of 60 characters. At most, the less important ending will be cut off.
The title should also look good in the browser bar - let's not forget about the users who will agree to view our website.
Regularly checking the recommendations and how our results look can be useful for key tabs. The time spent on constantly adapting the titles of all subpages to current trends will be disproportionate to the effect.

Page Title on Mobile in SERPPage Title on Mobile in SERP
Paradoxically, titles can be longer on mobile devices (in the top photo) than on desktop devices (in the bottom photo).

SEO Myth: Description cannot exceed 160 characters
Similar rules to those described above for titles (or rather almost no rules ) can be found for descriptions .

Example of a SERP result with a 4-line description
Although the vast majority of results are cut off after two lines, here as many as four were displayed.

The issue of descriptions is further complicated by the fact that Google likes to change them if it thinks it can offer something better. The content of the description depends strongly on the query and can be different for the denmark telemarketing data same subpage. What's more, the text in the description does not directly affect our position - at most it can more effectively encourage users to click on the link, increasing traffic.

Therefore, focusing too much on descriptions, and even more so on their length, is a waste of time.

SEO Myth: External links should absolutely be nofollow
The rel attribute indicates the role of the link on the page. Setting the nofollow value causes the Google robot to be unlikely to go to this page and will not associate it with the page on which the link is placed. The link can also be described in more detail - with the value sponsored for paid links and ugc for links in comments, user posts, etc.

It is commonly believed that the rel=”nofollow” attribute will help us avoid sharing Google’s good opinion of us with other sites. However, such selfishness and self-admiration can be destructive and have no justification.

Directing users to external sites can be seen as a signal that the site is more reliable.

According to Google, we should use the nofollow attribute when we do not want to be associated with the page we are linking to. But if we are writing a good quality article on a topic that is also covered by another page - why should we be ashamed of it?

Even if adding nofollow to valuable external links isn’t a huge leap forward, it’s hard to see why. There are potentially more SEO benefits to “owning” valuable external links than pretending you have nothing to do with them.

SEO Myth: Links to our site should be loaded with keywords
When recommending a product on a forum, do you simply post a link, or do you write keywords within the anchor text (link text) and then place additional keywords in the link title?

Links saturated with keywords are striking at first glance and we tend to treat them as spam.

It is commonly said that Google also effectively recognizes spammy or sponsored links. This does not mean that you cannot use keywords in links, but let's be reasonable . We should definitely avoid situations when we get a large number of links with the same, unnatural-looking keyword phrase. Instead, we can place longer descriptions (containing keywords) in the link texts, e.g. check how to implement structured data .

And most importantly: giving up spammy-looking, repetitive, keyword anchor texts doesn't mean we can't use keywords in link texts. We can and should. But with caution.

Summary
The intention of search engines is to provide the most relevant, valuable and reliable content. Knowing how search engine mechanisms work to find such content makes it easier to gain a high position. However, these mechanisms are constantly changing, leaving behind many myths.

Some time ago I wrote about free tools used in SEO . They are definitely worth using, as they will help us provide our users with the best content in the best form, which will sooner or later be appreciated by search engines. However, let's not panic when we detect that our title has 80 characters and the tools draw attention to the error with a red alert. We will definitely make a mistake if we optimize the page based on myths, which, if they ever had a chance to be proven, were probably years ago.