With so much information out there about SEO, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. In fact, sometimes a little bit of knowledge can be dangerous, as people can wind up falling prey to some common misconceptions about SEO. eVisible would like to clear up some of the myths that we see many website owners have that can cause major problems with their online marketing strategies:

Myth: Link Building is Dead. Many people have become confused because Google has recently penalized websites that attempt to buy their way to a high volume of links. This is different than organic link building, which is what happens when links come to a site in a “natural” matter. This type of link building is still very valid and can have a very positive impact on your SEO. There’s a great value in working with a company such as eVisible that can create an organic link building campaign that stays within Google’s parameters.

Myth: Social Media Has Replaced Link Building. With the exception of Google+, the opposite is true. Because social networks such as Facebook and Twitter don’t share information with Google, Google doesn’t factor social links into their SERP.

Myth: Search Result Positions Don’t Matter. It’s true that it’s harder than ever to determine a true search engine “ranking” because factors such as geolocation and personalization mean that people’s search results are different. But there’s still a major difference between being first on a page or tenth. And there’s a huge gap between being on the first page of results or not.

Myth: Google Is Spying On You. Google isn’t the government. While they use Google Analytics to determine if you are doing something against their “rules” (such as creating multiple domains for links), they don’t use Analytics as part of their site rankings.

Myth: All You Need for a High Ranking Site Is Content. The message that “content is king” has been twisted by some people who now believe that you don’t need to do SEO work in order to rank highly. The reality is that without the proper SEO features, your great content will just sit there unread.

So what are the things that you need to pay attention to in order for your SEO campaign to work today? In many ways, some of the same things that have always worked:

Authorship: Make sure that your blog posts, articles and other content are linked to your Google+ profile. You also want to make sure that your business information is featured every time you post content.

Content: Don’t post thin content or content that strays from specific topics. Anything that comes off as too “salesy” might get punished by Google.

Alt Tags: Use alt tags for your images and other places in your content.

Robots.txt: If your robots.txt file is blocking Google from crawling your site, you simply won’t rank.

Page Speed: Faster page speeds matter to Google and to your customers, especially if they are viewing your site on a mobile device.

URLs: Having site URLs be relative in your code doesn’t help you. Instead, make them absolute along with being short and free of multiple query parameters.

Penalties: If you are penalized by Google, you need professional help to determine the problems and the solutions to get you out of “Google jail.”

Website visitors react to what they see in very predictable ways. Study after study has shown that how a person encounters a website will have a significant impact on how they react to it. Even with the exact same content, one website layout can increase the chances of conversions while another can make the site more vulnerable to high bounce rates.

A good rule of thumb to follow throughout your entire website layout and design work is to focus on what you want people to do on the page. A big part of conversion rate optimization is to understand the purpose of the page and getting people to have a laser-like focus on the page elements that will push them to do the task you want them to do. Whether it’s signing up for more information or making a purpose, every element on the page should drive a visitor to do just that.

So how do you do this? Here are just a few of the ways that you can increase your likelihood for conversion rate success:

Limit Choices: Too many choices can leave website visitors paralyzed by options, so they wind up doing nothing. Instead of giving visitors multiple different forms to fill out, limit them to one choice. Instead of having all of the different social media sites listed with sharing buttons, limit the page to the few sites that make the most sense for your customers.

Top to Bottom, Left to Right: People read websites like they read newspapers. This means they expect the most important information to be “above the fold”, i.e. above the first half of the page. They also are used to reading left-to-right, which means that you want to make sure that valuable information is on the left side of the page. Keep calls to action and other secondary content on the bottom half of the page. If a person scrolls to this part of the page, chances are that they are ready to take the next step.

Headline Sizes Matter: People are attracted to big, bold headlines that spread across the screen from the top of the page. Design your site so the most important information is encapsulated within a headline at the top of each page.

Use Images: Especially of people. Studies have shown that website visitors react particularly strongly when they see pictures of people on a website.

Think About Usability: If a person can’t navigate your website, they’ll click away rather quickly. Avoid this by utilizing a clean layout with a solid color contrast, plenty of white space and an avoidance of overstuffing the pages with too much clutter.

Keep Ads and Sidebars Away From Main Content: Whether you are selling ad space on your site or have internal links to other pages on your site, you want to keep these elements apart from your main content. Have a clear delineation between the main content and any sidebar content that might pull people away from your main message.