Many companies are caught up in search engine optimization, but this approach belongs in the past. In my 15 years working with SEO, I’ve watched the process evolve from a black hat spam tactic into a nuanced, quality-based marketing strategy—and that evolution has only just begun.

The best advice I ever got came from my boss at my first real, full-time job. He was giving his monthly corporate overview of the startup, discussing the company's progress and describing its history. He recalled that when he started out, he had no employees, no clients and no revenue.

Many businesses today consider backlinks to be the gold standard in boosting organic keyword rankings. It’s believed that, if they can generate a high number of links, they’re sure to rank highly on Google searches. It doesn’t matter where the backlinks come from. As long as plenty exist, the company is sure to profit — right?

It’s easy to forget that different teams must rely on one another to get the whole job done. That’s because interdepartmental separation happens naturally at companies in which teams focus on different initiatives.

We’re in the age of uncertainty when it comes to keywords. Utilizing them in content is still crucial for search engines to interpret subject matter and relevance, but relying too heavily on sprinkling these buzzwords into your content can land you in serious trouble.

A high organic search ranking is essential to your business. More than 71 percent of users click a link on the first page of results on Google, and almost 68 percent choose one of the top five results. Only 1.6 percent of searchers progress beyond the second page.

This article was originally posted on VERGE.

Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

There is a new category of websites, as far as Google is concerned, and it’s got its own set of rules. If your website solicits any personal information, uses monetary transactions, or offers any type of major life advice – like legal, medical, or financial – you’ll want to listen up.

     Security is a top priority at Google. In 2014, Google announced a slight ranking boost to HTTPS URLs in the SERPs. Although the industry is divided if this really made a difference for SEO and is worth the investment,

Think about the last purchase you made. What were the features, advantages, and benefits of the specific product or brand that you selected? We took a look at a few popular brands in differenct verticals and considered the positioning of the product in the market. Did their positionings match our responses? Find out!

Online video advertising provides marketers the opportunity to utilize site, sound, and motion to better communicate their message. While the idea is not new, the recent advancements in technology and online video integration has created a new medium for businesses to precisely reach target audiences where they live, work, and play.

The Quicksprout blog is a credible and well developed blog managed by Neil Patel. The blog covers a wide array of digital marketing topics including but not limited to SEO, content marketing, link building, and conversion rate optimization. Neil is a well-known digital marketing expert and co-founder of Crazy Egg, Kissmetrics, and Hello Bar.

10 years. I can't believe it. Well maybe I can. You see I was so focused in the early days that failure was not an option. I believed Teknicks would be something great and I knew it would last beyond ten years; it had to, it was my whole life focus. Before I was married and before I had my kids (the two best days of my life), I had one focus: to grow Teknicks to the point that I didn't have to work for someone else. Pretty straightforward goal. I literally hated going to work for someone else, but I still gave it 100% and my employers ended up being some of my largest clients (tip: don't burn bridges).