The SEO community presents few authoritative voices amidst the endless crowd of upstarts, self-proclaimed gurus, and DIY enthusiasts. Taken in combination with the regular updates to Google algorithms that fuel constant shifts in SEO, the inevitable result is a community plagued by rumors and misconceptions. To help clear the muddied waters, here are a few SEO myths that belong up there with Bigfoot and fan death.

Eighty percent of people will only read the headline or first few lines of an article and move on. So, with that in mind, keep your content to the point and have a nice day.

Ok, headlines matter. That doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, but the reality is that people have different expectations of the content that they engage with. Target market, industry, and the nature of the content all factor into the expectations users have about length. Context is key. So with that in mind, here are several key considerations about content length.

Memes are everywhere. Social Media Marketing is huge. So, it’s time to get with it and reach out to your target market with the latest viral memes, right?

No.

That’s not how this works.

Image optimization is often treated as an afterthought for SEO, which is exactly why you need to master it. Effective SEO isn’t just about optimizing your site; it’s about optimizing in ways that your competitors haven’t covered. Doing this will give you an edge in organic search. In that respect, image optimization is a great place to start.

Use this guide to check each image on your page and ensure that your image SEO is up to par.

SEO is one of those perennial web design topics we never get tired of discussing. We all know the importance of SEO for your website, and thanks to the proliferation of SEO strategies over the past few years, there are plenty of options that don’t cost a thing!

The idea of A/B testing should be SEO 101 for smart marketers. A big part of playing the marketing game and winning is finding out which pieces of your campaign are a perfect fit for the big-picture conversion puzzle. Fortunately, modern A/B testing tools come equipped with features and functions that help turn data into actionable insights.

Here are a few tools you should keep in your A/B testing toolbox.

A 2016 report by Social Media Examiner found that 37 percent of marketers believe that visuals are the most important content style for their marketing goals, barely falling short of blogging (38 percent).

Visual content is everywhere, and marketers have more options than ever. At the minimum, incorporate the following five visual content styles into your strategies.

Even if you’ve never heard the term inbound marketing, you’ve almost certainly seen it in action.

Imagine going to Best Buy to pick out a new laptop. As you’re deciding between a couple options, a sales rep walks up and starts going on about how great laptop “A” is. It has incredible features! Look at the crystal clear HD display! You’ll die before the battery does!

But you aren’t listening. You’re not interested in being sold to—you’re not even sure what you want yet!

At this point, you’re more interested in discovering what options are available. You ditch the rep and notice that laptop B has a digital kiosk that explains the product’s benefits. You spend some time watching the videos, learning about the product, and forming a decision on your own.

You’re not ready to buy today, but as you leave the store, you’re struck by the difference in the two experiences:

We hate to be a Negative Nancy, but not all clients are great. Some clients think they have the budget to invest in their website project and then don’t. Others miss every deadline we give them (we can’t build a website without copy, images and the go-ahead on design decisions). A few are even verbally combative and think it’s okay to behave that way because they are paying us.

We recommend developing buyer personas – a fictional representation of your ideal client. And we also recommend developing a negative buyer persona – a fictional representation of the clients that benefit your business the least.

Landing pages are a tested, measured and proven strategy to convert visitors you're driving to your website. So why aren't more companies using them? We find that a lot of businesses market on social media, their website and PPC campaigns and drive all of those visitors to the same page – or worse, the homepage of their website. 

These businesses are missing out on a valuable opportunity to slice and dice their marketing materials by buyer persona, the backbone of inbound marketing, which costs 62% LESS than outbound marketing. 

So, bottom line: you should be building impossible-to-ignore landing pages. Here's how.