There is no question that digital marketing is essential to building a recognizable and profitable brand. The importance of online strategies is now widely understood and recognized. While knowledge has spread, however, so have myths of what exactly it means to run a campaign according to "best practices." In our experience, most people think they have an understanding of what search engine optimization means -- but in actuality have outdated or completely false misconceptions about it.

Fortunately, the truth isn't difficult to uncover. This is especially true thanks to the many free resources Google offers to developers and webmasters. These tools not only highlight the key marketing activities involved in a successful campaign but also debunk incorrect theories that can distract marketers from the bigger picture.

SearchEngingeLand.com contributor, Kaspar Szymanski, took the liberty of assembling this list of common SEO myths and the truth behind them, according to an ex-Googler. Although the entire article is worth reading, we featured some of our favorite points below to help marketers stay focused.

We always hear people talk about digital marketing and rattle off a list of "essential" things one must do to "get it right" when it comes to SEO. While there certainly are several actions every webmaster should do to yield the best placement in the results pages, the idea that SEO comes down to a one-time task list is simply misleading. As Szymanski explains in his article:

"Like any other company investment in assets, over time, that very same investment will inevitably wear off. Best practices of the past become outdated or downright obsolete. To keep up with the competition, especially in the more lucrative niches, SEO needs to be considered an ongoing effort with planned, periodic spurts of increased activity scheduled ahead of time."

At its most basic level, SEO is simply the process of formatting your website or other marketing collateral in a way that the search engines can understand. After all, if Google cannot read and digest what information you are presenting, there is no way they will ever rank your website higher in its results pages.

Building a reputation offline takes a lot of work and consistency, where expertise and value are regularly demonstrated. Digital marketing works the same way; only it accounts for both humans and the search engines in this process. Google requires the same regularity to be genuinely beneficial -- and that friends, takes time.