Attaining high rankings on search engines is critically important for acquiring organic traffic from keyword searches.  Search engines do not publicly publish the algorithms that power their ranking systems, so many marketers are left making incorrect assumptions on how to boost their rankings. SEO is significantly beneficial to your marketing strategy when done correctly, so take a look below for some clarification on common misconceptions and how to make your SEO strategy successful.

It’s all about keywords

Keywords definitely play a role in SEO, but they are not the only significant factor. Rather than putting all of your focus on the keywords that drive people to your site, shift some focus to creating high quality content.  It’s too obvious when you squeeze multiple keywords into a page in hopes of it boosting your ranking. According to moz.com, studies looking at thousands of the top search results across different queries have found that keyword repetitions play an extremely limited role in boosting rankings, and have a low overall correlation with top placement.

More links are better

Having a lot of links will not benefit your site if they aren’t linking to quality content.  Quality content is crucial to building an audience and driving visitors and leads to your site. Inbound links definitely help pages rank better, but it’s more effective to focus on creating content that will get shared through social media.

Google Authorship drives higher rankings

Webmaster and content creators were told that Google Authorship puts a face and a name to a search engine result, which gives a personable approach and connection to your readers. In theory, authorship wouldn't necessarily increase direct rankings, but it could enhance results with Google+ data integration.  At any rate, it no longer matters...at all.  Google has officially killed off authorship in search results.

SEO is "set it and forget it"

SEO is not something you do once and never touch again...While you will see positive effects from a good SEO campaign, your rankings may decrease after time if you don’t regularly update your site. An efficient SEO plan needs consistent monitoring, updating, and research on the best trends for your market.  So before you decide to jump on the SEO bandwagon, know that you need to watch your rankings closely and modify your content as necessary, and often times, frequently.

Social media has nothing to do with SEO

Social media actually plays a very significant role in SEO and “social search” is more significant than ever.  If your business is mentioned frequently enough on various social media platforms, those results will show up directly in search engines. Having a strong base of followers and connections, both qualitatively and quantitatively, on social media is factored into how your content will be ranked.  A company or person of high influence will more likely rank higher for the content they post than someone with low quality followers or connections.  Social media increasingly affects search results, so having a social media strategy in place is imperative to your success.

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