SEO isn't everything – it is an important part of a company’s overall strategy.

• Up until a few years ago, search engines operated in a manner that awarded higher rankings to websites that were saturated with keywords, and popular search topics. SEO became a household phrase and drove a lot of website owners to create webpages that were designed to score high on analytic reviews, but did little to bolster a company’s actual market presence.

• Google, Bing, and Yahoo – three of the highest profile search engines on the market today, have addressed many of the ways websites can “game” their systems, and have designed ranking protocols that place emphasis on real content and relevant search results. In fact, adding useless information to a website in the hopes of increasing search rankings can have the opposite effect.  Google’s Panda update started penalizing websites for low quality content. Google reports that they modified their search ranking process over 500 times during 2012 – almost 1.4 times per day!

• Duplicate content : Many companies will try to achieve ranking for two separate but similar keywords. To accomplish this they’ll build two different landing pages that tend to have similar content. Several variations of the keywords will be distributed among these pages. Google will undoubtedly find and identify the synonyms and provide ranking for the different keywords. It is important to understand that contemporary Google ranking protocols punish websites for duplicate content, so be cautious about constructing several landing pages with content that is nearly identical.

• Misguided keyword strategy : Keywords are important, but it is crucial that the website contains keywords that will drive actual rankings and provide a benefit to visitors that search via your chosen keyword. “Keyword stuffy” is when companies try to saturate their websites with every known keyword related to their industry. Keep it simple, accurate, and applicable to the target market.

• Constructing websites for search engines, not your customers : Countless hours are spent analyzing search engine analytic reports. This is an important part of developing and managing an effective website, but it is secondary to building a site that is designed for the satisfaction of your audience. Analytics is important, but making sure your customers find valuable information via a simple and effective website is crucial.

• Issues with link building : Online marketers contend that having tons of links and back links is of paramount importance when it comes to garnering high search ranking results.  While appropriate internal and external links will help your site achieve better visibility, links need to be relevant and you need to use common sense. Links using keyword-focused anchor text may help rankings, but you don’t want to oversaturate links with these important words and phrases.