The SEO industry has drastically evolved in the past couple of years. Everyone is pretty confused and not sure about what really is going on in the SEO industry. To clear some misconceptions and myths about SEO, we decided to conduct an extensive research and reveal to you what truly works and what is outdated in the SEO industry. So, here are the five common SEO myths that you need to know to understand where you need to focus on to get the right results.

Myth #1: You have to update the homepage of your website all the time.

Some people think that not updating their homepage consistently will decrease their ranking. In most cases that is not the truth, because if you have a sales page that offers a product to sell then there would be no reason at all to update that page unless something about the product description needs alterations.

Myth #2: Submitting XML sitemap is going to boost your rankings.

Google provides a webmasters interface and from there you are able to submit a sitemap which is an XML file containing links to every page on your site. Some website owners take the time to submit such a file every time they make a change, but that's not necessary. Submitting a sitemap doesn't change your rankings. It just adds pages which might not have been indexed already.

Myth #3: You need to submit your site to search engines.

Search engines have URL submission pages where you send your site to search engines. While doing this was essential a few years back, that process is unnecessary now. The crawlers that these engines use today are sophisticated enough that any new website will be found in a short span of time. The only time you will have to worry about submitting your site is if for some reason it wasn't indexed automatically after a couple of days.

Myth #4: The title tag is concealed from search engines.

Most of what Google views on your website is the text that is visible to users. As a result, it would be common to think that the title is not picked up. Nevertheless, your title is really important for SEO. Not only is Google making use of it to help your ranking, but people are going to see it as well when they go to click on your website.

Myth #5: Using automated SEO methods is always black hat.

Many people use automated SEO tactics which do not fall into the black hat area. A lot of companies have really big sites and they make use of automated scripts to do a lot of SEO. Whether or not a method is black hat is based on what the outcome is, not on how automated it is.