Before you started a website or blog, “search engine optimization” (SEO) was probably a term you never heard of. Of course, now that you’re trying to attract traffic, it’s one of the greatest tools you can have on your side. Unfortunately, there are many things that the average person doesn’t know about SEO, but rest assured, we’re here to make sure you’re no longer the average person!

1. Viral Marketing Might Not Help SEO 

If your social media post goes viral, it’s cause for celebration! Unfortunately, you can't always count on this increasing your ranking. While search engines do “crawl” social websites for content, they don’t typically take the number of “likes” or “shares” into account. 

Fortunately, it's not all bad news. While Google may ignore those 3,257 shares, your ranking could still increase if other websites backlink your viral post and you used the appropriate keywords. The moral of the story is, while viral content might not improve your ranking, proper SEO strategies still can. 

2. Understanding the Duplicate Content Paradox

Duplicate content accounts for 25-30 percent of everything on the internet, and while you might not intentionally have multiple pages with the same content, it’s very likely that you do. Unfortunately, Google won’t know which page to rank and other websites won’t know which to backlink.

This can dilute your ranking on each page. Take the time to research whether your page has duplicate content or not. Of course, this is slightly paradoxical because seemingly duplicate content can help in certain cases.

Did your blog post do well? Repurpose it into a YouTube video. Is your white paper getting lots of traffic? Create a similar blog post on your page. This isn’t technically duplicate content, and it will bring in more traffic over time. 

3. You Want the Whole World to See Your Content

Wouldn’t it be cool to run a clothing shop that showed up next to TJ-Maxx and Kohl's every time anyone Googled “clothes"? While this seems great, the fact of the matter is that local businesses typically don't need to worry about reaching national audiences right away. 

This is why you should focus on local SEO if you serve a single community. The first steps to do this are claiming your online local business pages (e.g. Yelp, Zagat, etc.), using city-specific keywords and tracking local search rankings.

Don't Fall for SEO Misconceptions

While it may sound over the top, SEO can literally make or break your website. Search engine myths can ruin any chance you have of a being found online.Once you understand the misconceptions, though, you can move forward with a stronger SEO strategy.

In a world where ranking high is essential to success, more knowledge about SEO is a powerful tool.