4 SEO Myths South Wales Businesses Still Believe

Digital Marketing Articles, Local SEO

(And The Truth Behind Them)

Climb to Success - SEO in south Wales

We all want our business websites to appear at the top of Google and with good reason. Around 90% of UK searches happen on Google, making it the most important place to focus your SEO efforts. However, SEO changes quickly, and outdated advice can hold your website back.

4 Common SEO Myths

At HML Marketing, we regularly speak to business owners who have been given mixed, unclear or outdated information. So to help you avoid confusion, here are four common SEO myths we get asked about — and the truth behind them.

MYTH 1:“Link building is more important than content.”

MYTH!

This hasn’t been true for a long time.

Google now prioritises high-quality, relevant, trustworthy content over mass link building. While citations and high-quality directory listings are still helpful, outdated tactics like automated link submissions to hundreds of irrelevant websites do more harm than good.

Today, great content + strong relevance = higher rankings.

MYTH 2: “I can trick Google to get faster rankings.”

MYTH!

Attempting to manipulate Google never ends well.

Shortcuts like keyword stuffing, hidden text, spam backlinks or AI-generated low-quality content are easy for Google’s algorithms to detect — and penalties can remove your site from search results entirely.

Long-term growth comes from doing things properly.

MYTH 3: “I can take my time writing content.”

MYTH!

Content is the foundation of your SEO.

Google ranks sites based on the content it crawls. If your website has thin, outdated or incomplete content, rankings will suffer.

The sooner you publish properly structured, keyword-led content, the sooner Google can index and rank your site effectively.

MYTH 4: “The more keywords I add, the better.”

MYTH!

Adding too many keywords — especially unnaturally — does not improve rankings.

Google no longer relies on long keyword lists in meta tags. Instead, it looks at how naturally keywords appear in:

  • Headings
  • Paragraphs
  • Alt text
  • URL structure
  • Topic coverage

Relevant, well-written content beats keyword stuffing every time.

4 SEO Best Practices You Should Follow

Now that we’ve cleared up the myths, here are four practices that genuinely help your website perform better.

SEO

1. Content REALLY is key.

TRUE

Google values websites that provide helpful, informative content.

Top content tips:

  • Put your most important information at the top of the page
  • Write detailed, well-researched content
  • Keep your site updated
  • Cover topics thoroughly

Quality content improves rankings, user experience, and conversions.

2. Blogging Works.

TRUE

A blog is one of the most effective SEO tools.

Google indexes blog posts separately, meaning your site can appear for many additional keywords — increasing visibility and traffic without large advertising costs.

3. On-Page SEO Matters.

TRUE

Every page should include:

  • Strong headings
  • Unique meta titles and descriptions
  • Internal links
  • Schema markup
  • Fast load speed
  • Mobile optimisation

These help Google understand your content and reward your site with higher rankings.

4. Social Media Supports SEO.

TRUE

Platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, X and Instagram help with brand visibility and off-page SEO.

Once your website links to your social channels, consistent posting strengthens your online presence and can indirectly improve your rankings.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to SEO, don’t get caught up in hearsay. With Google dominating the UK search market, it’s vital to maintain consistent, well-structured optimisation.

Use directories sparingly, publish valuable content regularly, and avoid outdated advice. No directory can replace a strong Google ranking.

Is Your Website SEO-Friendly?

A modern website should allow you to:

  • Easily update content and metadata
  • Integrate social media feeds
  • Upload and optimise images
  • Manage keywords, blogs and layout changes
  • Offer full mobile compatibility

At HML Marketing, we build websites using the latest techniques and industry-leading platforms such as WordPress, ensuring your on-page SEO is strong from day one. Our South Wales SEO services also include professional copywriting and blogging to keep your website fresh, relevant, and competitive, helping you maintain consistent visibility and long-term ranking success.

Quick Query HML

What is National SEO?

National SEO is a long-term investment that can separate your business from the competitors. Although similar to local SEO, National SEO focuses primarily on ranking for broad keyword terms rather than ranking for specific geographical terms.

Optimising a website involves many activities to increase your rankings and likelihood of people finding your website. We want to increase your websites' relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Here's just a few of the activities we employ -

  • editing website content, adding new content
  • doing HTML, and associated coding
  • promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links
  • optimising mobile search as it's surpassed desktop search
  • promoting mobile first on search is key

HML pledges' to offer the very best value online marketing service to all our members and our guaranteed commitment to outperform your competitors, generate you more income through our rigorous SEO work and comprehensive open reporting.

Seo 6370764

More Options for National SEO?

Find out about what's included in our National SEO membership packages and do compare us, as we pride ourselves on offering the best value comprehensive SEO with guaranteed commitment. National SEO Guide & Pricing

What is Local SEO?

Local SEO (search engine optimisation) targets local people doing local searches for your products or services which accounts for nearly half of all searches.

46%
of searches now have a 'local intent'

So what is local search optimisation?

Local SEO is similar to National SEO in that they both aim to improve the visibility of your website in a web search engine's unpaid results (SERP - search engine results page) often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results. The higher ranked on the search results page and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive. These visitors can then be converted into customers.

Local SEO, however, differs in that it is focused on optimising a business' for local people searching for its products or services. These can be brick-and-mortar businesses with physical locations, like a grocery store or dentist's office, or service-area businesses that operate throughout a certain geographic area, like an electrician or house cleaning company.

With good enough SEO and authority, anyone in the world can rank for a search query like ‘how to fix my dripping tap’. But when someone is looking to purchase locally a product or service, it becomes ‘plumbers near me’ or ‘best plumber in [their location]’. That’s a local search and you’ll need local SEO to ensure you rank high enough for people for find you.

How do we optimise for local searches?

Local seo mobile

As these people searching, typically include a location or ‘near me’ (which aren’t even necessary if searching using Google Maps), search engines understand that what the searcher wants is business suggestions or lists based on location, and so that’s precisely what they offer up in the local search engine results pages (SERPs).

Ranking for local search involves a similar process to general SEO but includes some specific elements to rank a business for local search. Local searches trigger search engines to display two types of results:

On the Search engine results page: local organic results. The local organic results include web pages related to the search query with local relevance. These often include directories such as Yelp, Thompson Local, Facebook.

The 'Local Pack' displays businesses that have signed up with Google and taken ownership of their 'Google My Business' (GMB) listing.

This includes everything from claiming a business listing to ensuring a franchise location appears in a local search on Google (a process known as location data or citation management). It can also extend to managing online ratings and reviews, local-centric social media engagement, and beyond.