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.

Most people understand the importance of creating an effective content marketing campaign. However, it’s much more difficult to create a campaign that is destined for success. In fact, most content creation strategies are doomed to fail before they even get off the ground.

Here are a few of the most common issues that cripple content marketing campaigns and what you can do to avoid these mistakes:

Not Establishing Your Parameters Before Starting Your Campaign.

When This Happens: In the early stages of a campaign, usually when a company decides that it needs to do content marketing in the first place.

Why This Happens: It’s easy to get excited about starting a content marketing campaign. It’s often so easy to get excited that you don’t think about why you are doing a campaign, who your target audience is or what your objectives should be.

How to Avoid It: Think about who the ideal person to read your content is, then write content that you believe will directly impact this person’s life.

Not Creating Content on a Regular Basis.

When This Happens: A few months into a campaign, as soon as the “newness” of launching a creative campaign wears off.

Why This Happens: It’s easy to devote a lot of energy into a content creation campaign at the beginning. But it’s also easy to give up on a campaign before it really gets off the ground.

How to Avoid It: You need to understand that Google rewards content only if it is done on a consistent basis. Set a schedule to post several times a week at the start of your campaign and stick to it.

Keywords Matter.

When This Happens: Poor keyword strategies often doom content creation campaigns from the beginning.

Why This Happens: It’s common to take the wrong approach to keywords, such as keyword stuffing or using keywords that are too broad.

How to Avoid It: Start by doing some effective keyword research to make sure you are targeting the right phrases that will connect with your target customers.

Failing to Create Internal Links.

When This Happens: At the start of a campaign before you even write your first piece of content.

Why This Happens: Many people simply don’t understand the importance of internal links and how much of a role it can have in helping the overall SEO on their site.

How to Avoid It: Content and links are two things that should work together and not independently of each other. Think about ways that you can internally link to multiple pages on your website with each piece of content.

Failing to Diversify Your Content.

When This Happens: Whenever a marketer fails to realize that everything they publish can potentially be content marketing material.

Why This Happens: It’s easy to get locked in on a certain type of content (such as blog posts) and continue to produce it again and again.

How to Avoid It: Diversify your content. eVisible can help you to create high quality blog posts for your site. We can also provide you with the right mixture of premium content and link creation.

Not Integrating Images Into Your Content.

When This Happens: Throughout the entirety of a content creation campaign.

Why This Happens: Too many people associate “content” with “words” and don’t understand the potential value of integrating images into your articles, blog posts and onsite content.

How to Avoid It: Images make stories more interesting and help to improve SEO results. Use them every time you create content.

Not Using Social Media to Promote Your Content.

When This Happens: After the first blog post is a written and a content marketer simply expects that people will magically find it and make it viral.

Why This Happens: It’s a fundamentally lack of understanding about how content gets shared. You need to promote your content in order for people to find it.

How to Avoid It: Use popular social media sites to share the content you create. Come up with ideas such as mailing lists or forum postings to expand your reach.

Many people understand that it’s important to include public relations efforts as part of your online marketing campaign. However, in order for this to be successful, it needs to be more than just hiring a firm for press release writing and distribution services and emailing a release out to a few media outlets. You need to have a clear strategy for your public relations efforts if you want them to augment your existing marketing efforts.

A lot of businesses make major mistakes with their public relations, whether they hire press release submission services or decide to do it themselves. Here are 10 things that you need to make sure you do if you are going to put out your own press release:

Don’t Underestimate the Power of PR for SEO: While a press release doesn’t have SEO value on its own, it can lead to online sites writing stories about your company or running the release whole — including your business’ link.

Make Your Release Newsworthy: A press release serves as a way to announce news to the media. You need to make sure that each press release contains information that a reporter or editor will think is relevant and interesting to their readers and not just promoting a business.

Keep Focus: You’ll be tempted to write about every interesting aspect of your business in your first press release. Resist this urge and keep focused on one story you want to tell and save the others for future releases.

Keep Control of Everything: From the words in the press release to the pictures used to accompany the release, you need to make sure that you have control of all aspects.

Find the Right Journalists: A press release isn’t very useful if no one can read it. You need reporters and editors to decide to run the release in order for people to read it, which means putting thought into who you are sending it to. Finding people who have written about your business or your competitors is a great start.

Follow Up: Once you’ve sent out a press release, call or email the reporter to see if they are interested. Even if they aren’t, you might strike up a conversation that leads to a different story.

Be Prepared for What’s Next: Have a gameplan for what happens if a reporter is interested in doing a story. Not being prepared can lead to lost media opportunities.

Structure Your Release Properly: This means having a great headline and a first paragraph that entices people to keep reading.

Write the Whole Story: Don’t make reporters — often short on time — have to do more work to get a press release “ready for publication.”

Anticipate Anything: You never know when a chance for an editorial PR link will come up.

The list of things you need to do when you move your business to a new location is seemingly endless. But don’t forget about updating your online profile to include your new address! The last thing you need is a customer trying to reach you for a sale but finding an abandoned building. Before you finalize your move, make sure you do these things:

1. Try to Retain Your Current Phone Number. This will help with maintaining consistency with customers. If you have moved towns, try to keep your old number and have it forwarded to your new number.

2. Update the Address on Your Online Listings. This includes online directories like Google Places, Yelp, Angie’s List, Yahoo Local along with local Chamber of Commerce sites and specializes sites for your industry. And don’t forget to update your address on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

3. Update Your Marketing Materials. This includes your website, email signature, business cards, press releases and more.

4. Tell Neighbors You’ve Moved. Make sure that people you have worked near know that your business has moved in case customers are curious.

5. Let the Government Know. Along with updating your mailing address with the post office, you’ll need to update your business license with the city (or get a new one if moving into a new city), your tax information and any other licensing agencies you work with.

6. Refresh Your Paid Search Campaigns. If you are focusing on a local market or area in a paid search marketing campaign, you’ll need to readjust your targets and also your address so people aren’t sent to the wrong place.

7. Update Citations. Not all website listings with your address will be online directories. Do a search for your old address and see which results come up on the first page. Reach out to these sites and ask them to update their listing.

8. Change Over Automatic Payments. This might seem basic but many people forget to change the address on their business credit card or with their bank and wind up missing payments.

In order to make the most of your web-presence, you need more than just a site that has an SEO friendly design for desktop users. More people than ever are using their mobile devices to get online and make purchases. In order to reach these customers, you need to think of your mobile SEO and desktop SEO as two separate but interrelated strategies.

Here are five key things to think about as you develop an independent mobile SEO strategy:

The User Experience Drives Everything: The number one factor that drives a successful mobile SEO strategy is giving the user a positive experience. Not only has Google signaled that this plays a factor when you want to improve a search engine ranking, but it also helps to generate conversions.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly: Mobile sites can be responsive to adapt to readers on mobile devices, or you can create your own dedicated site for mobile users. There are pros and cons to each approach, but it’s important that you have a dedicated way for mobile users to access your site. Doing so will greatly increase your potential for conversions from mobile users.

Have a Clean Design: Having a website design with lots of graphics and other design elements can create major problems for mobile users. With limited screen sizes, clutter can keep people from seeing the most important information on your site. It can also make pages slow to load and make mobile users quickly decide to leave your page and go somewhere else.

Consider How Mobile Users Search: A mobile user likely won’t type in a search with your city name; they’ll almost always type (or speak) a search that says to find something “near” them. Because of this, making sure that your business’ location is part of your SEO strategy and not just a city name can pay dividends.

Grasp User Intent: Mobile users are more likely to be looking for something near them. This means that making sure your location, hours and phone number are easily accessible on the site and through Google+ is critical.

The start of the year is a great time to review your content marketing strategy. Whether your plans just need some simple tune-ups or you need to start doing content marketing, you can always benefit from a fresh approach. In the coming year, content will continue to be one of the driving forces of search engine optimization but how this content is delivered to readers and the correct type of content to create is always evolving.

With this in mind, here are four pieces of advice for your content marketing moving forward:

Have an Overriding Plan You Can Measure: Your content strategy needs to be part of your overall SEO and online marketing campaign and not just operate as its own entity. You can hire a provider of website content writing services to create killer content, but if it’s not helping you to drive visitors to your site or close sales, what is its purpose? You also need to make sure that you have metrics in place to see the patterns of your content’s readers and if the content is effective in spurring action.

Plan for Mobile Reading: A recent Pew Research study showed that 63 percent of all people with a cell phone use their device to go online. This represents a huge amount of people who are potentially reading your content on a phone along with other people using tablets and other non-phone mobile devices. Make sure you are using responsive design to ensure that the content works well on smaller screens.

Personalize Your Content: Whether you are drafting email newsletters, blog posts or guest articles on another site, it’s important that you make sure that readers feel like they are reading something unique and different. Speak directly to your audience and try to personalize your contact with them wherever you can. If you are the owner or CEO of your company, take the time to share your personality with your customers through your content. If readers feel a connection to you, they are more like to open emails and read your articles.

Make Your Content Informative and Useful: These have been two of the biggest buzzwords to come out of Google’s algorithm changes in recent years. While link building and higher search engine rankings might be a by-product of your content, you need to create this content in a way that provides readers with helpful information that is relevant to your industry. If you are working with an outside provider of content writing services, make sure they know your business well before they start writing on your behalf.

Before you send out a promotional or educational email to your customers, how much time do you spend on the headline? It’s probably not enough, as one recent email marketing survey showed that every word in the headline of your email can have a significant impact on if the recipient opens it. A leading email marketing company analyzed 24 billion emails delivered with 22,000 distinct words in the headline. The results showed that:

Personalization Is Important. Using a template or macro to automatically include the name of the recipient meant that it was far more likely that they would open the email. This was true for just using the first name or the last name, but the open rates were two to four times higher if both the first and last names were used.

Time Sensitivity Drives Open Rates. When emails used terms like “urgent,” “breaking” or “important” that implied a time sensitivity, open rates increased significantly.

Free Isn’t the Perfect Solution. Many email marketing experts assume that including the word “free” in any email will entice people to open. While it’s true to a small degree overall, in some industries such as travel and transportation, real estate and medical, using “free” actually reduced open rates. Interestingly, the word “freebie” appeared to be much more powerful than “free.”

Donation Requests Get Ignored. Words directly associated with charity such as “donation” or “fundraiser” caused open rates to fall dramatically. More ambiguous words such as “helping” also reduced open rates but only by a minor amount.

Announce Things to People But Don’t Remind People. When a headline “announced” something or “invited” someone to do something, open rates were high. They fell when the email “reminded” a person of something. It was even worse if the email threatened the reader with “cancellation.”

Word Pairs Matter. Some combinations of phrases, such as “Thank You,” made open rates go up. Other word pairs weren’t so powerful. Phrases such as “sign up” and “last chance” made open rates plummet.

Capitalization Can Help. One of the quirkiest findings of the research was that the capitalization of the email headline appears to have a correlation with open rates. Specifically, people were slightly more likely to open an email if all of the words in the headline were capitalized, but were slightly less likely to open an email if just one of the words was capitalized.