If you are wondering why your organic search results are lagging and your competition is beating you to the punch, you might want to rethink your SEO strategy.

Consider the following:

• On-page keyword usage comprises just 15% of the modern ranking algorithm
• Metadata is depreciating as the major search engines rely less on keyword and description metatags for search rankings
  

“Blended” or “universal” search – a practice of displaying varying media such as videos, images, blog entries and news along with standard search results – is becoming increasingly prevalent across the major search engines, making it critical to optimize all components of your web properties for search engine visibility.

As a result, all web property content – not only web pages but individual assets such as videos, images, and PDFs – need to be designed and deployed in such a way that they will be found and indexed by search engines.

Conclusion:

If you want to beat your competition, increase visibility, and ultimately drive traffic to your website, focus on your social media and linking strategies -- because SEO best practices from 2 years ago simply don't apply anymore.