{"id":10553,"date":"2021-05-02T07:02:52","date_gmt":"2021-05-02T07:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/~asiatwo1\/seohero.io\/?p=10553"},"modified":"2025-09-13T16:03:40","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T16:03:40","slug":"big-data-studies-challenge-well-known-seo-facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.seohero.io\/big-data-studies-challenge-well-known-seo-facts\/","title":{"rendered":"How Big Data Studies Challenge Well-Known SEO Facts?"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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How Big Data Studies Challenge Well-Known SEO Facts<\/h1>

How Big Data Studies Challenge Well-Known SEO Facts<\/p>

SEO has a lot of unclear aspects, but one thing is for sure \u2013 there’s no shortage of practical guides online. Type in an \u201cultimate SEO guide,\u201d and Google<\/a> will return you tons of them. Big names in SEO share their tactics and suggestions that small bloggers rewrite afterwards. Eventually, that information goes viral as the absolute truth across the web.<\/p>

Although that info isn’t always backed up with facts and figures, many people blindly trust it. However, big studies prove some SEO axioms wrong once in a while. Having processed millions of SEO data<\/a> items, guys from Ahrefs found contradictions in various topics \u2013 on-page optimization, long-tail keywords, featured snippets, etc.<\/p>

Learn which of the well-known SEO facts<\/a> didn’t prove out as a result of large-scale research.<\/p>

1. Your target keyword must be in all the \u201cstrategi\u0441\u201d places on the page.<\/h2>

There seems to be a conspiracy among authors of on-page SEO guides. They recommend adding a target keyword wherever possible \u2013 URL, SEO title, heading, subheadings, etc. However, the analysis of 2 million keywords proves most of the Top 10 pages lack it in those \u201cstrategic\u201d places. And they still rank high in organic search. Let’s take a closer look at each case.<\/p>

Keyword in URL<\/h3>

\"Well-Known<\/p>

How Big Data<\/a> Studies Challenge Well-Known SEO Facts<\/span><\/p><\/div>

SEO has a lot of unclear aspects, but one thing is for sure \u2013 there’s no shortage of practical guides online. Type in an \u201cultimate SEO guide,\u201d and Google will return you tons of them. Big names in SEO share their tactics and suggestions that small bloggers rewrite afterwards. Eventually, that information goes viral as the absolute truth across the web.<\/p>

Although that info isn’t always backed up with facts and figures, many people blindly trust it. However, big studies prove some SEO axioms wrong once in a while. Having processed millions of SEO data<\/a> items, guys from Ahrefs found contradictions in various topics \u2013 on-page optimization, long-tail keywords, featured snippets, etc.<\/p>

Learn which of the well-known SEO facts didn’t prove out as a result of large-scale research.<\/p>

1. Your target keyword must be in all the \u201cstrategi\u0441\u201d places on the page.<\/h2>

There seems to be a conspiracy among authors of on-page SEO guides. They recommend adding a target keyword wherever possible \u2013 URL, SEO title, heading, subheadings, etc. However, the analysis of 2 million keywords proves most of the Top 10 pages lack it in those \u201cstrategic\u201d places. And they still rank high in organic search. Let’s take a closer look at each case.<\/p>

Keyword in URL<\/h3>

\"\"<\/p>

As shown on the graph, only less than 20% of the Top 10 pages have a target keyword in URL. The remaining 80% got to the top without it. Does it mean you should remove keywords from URLs and use some jumbled text like this\u00a0mywebsitedomain.com\/?product_id=7395Jk<\/em>? Definitely not. First of all, a keyword in URL matters for readers, allowing them to figure out what your page is about at once. But it’s not something that could help you with rankings.<\/p>

Keyword in SEO Title<\/h3>

\"Keyword<\/p>

Google seems to devalue a target keyword in the SEO title. Only 27% of the Top 10 pages contain it, while the rest rank high with no keyword there. Treat it as an opportunity to craft catchy titles without having to stay within any verbal limits. That way, more people will be thrilled to click on your page in SERP<\/a>. And a click-through rate is what Google analyzes to understand if your content deserves the top position.<\/p>

Keyword in Headline<\/h3>

\"Keyword<\/p>

The headline (or H1 tag) is another \u201cstrategic\u201d place that often goes without a target keyword. As you can see, 85% of the Top 10 pages lack it there. Moreover, 70% of all the pages analyzed don’t have an H1 tag at all. Although the headline won’t help you with a ranking boost directly, it’ll still work in your favor. Its wording can influence how people will link to your content. If there’s a target keyword, most likely they’ll add it to the anchor text of a backlink<\/a>, which correlates with higher rankings (more on this in Section #5).<\/p>

Keyword in Subheading (or H2 tag)<\/h3>

\"Keyword<\/p>

In 93% of cases, there’s no target keyword in H2 tags on the Top 10 pages. The bottom line is to write meaningful subheadings without bothering about wording. That way, your content will look natural and oriented at real people rather than Googlebot. Even if you find ways to stuff keywords into subheadings naturally, your ingenuity won’t pay off in terms of ranking.<\/p>

Keyword in Meta Description<\/h3>

\"Keyword<\/p>

As in the case with H1 tags, over 70% of the Top 10 pages have no meta description. As for the pages that contain it, a target keyword is missing in more than half of them. While you’re still recommended to fill in a meta description field, it won’t increase your chances of ranking on the first page in SERP. Today, Google often omits meta descriptions and extracts a portion of text that is the most relevant to the search query.<\/p>

2. HTTPS sites rank higher than HTTP sites.<\/h2>

Google is a big fan of cybersecurity. No surprise the company confirmed HTTPS as a ranking signal on its\u00a0official blog<\/a>. What’s surprising is that over 85% of the pages analyzed have no HTTPS protection, but they are still in the top 10. By no means, this finding suggests you should neglect HTTPS, especially if you deal with sensitive data like customers’ credit cards. Just use it for its intended purpose, which is security rather than a ranking boost.<\/p>

\"HTTPS<\/p>

3. Long-tail keywords are necessarily long.<\/h2>

Most sources define \u201clong-tail keywords\u201d as phrases containing at least three words. But the length isn’t what makes a keyword long-tail. First of all, it’s low search volume per month. According to the research of 1.4 billion keywords, one- and two-word phrases can have miserable search volume as well. And vice versa. Phrases containing more than three words can get a lot of monthly searches.<\/p>

\"Long-tail<\/p>