Search Engine Optimization: What Not to Do.
Most internet marketers understand the importance of a well optimized site. In fact it is the goal of most internet marketers to rank highly for keywords relevant to their website. Successful search engine optimization and the subsequent high rankings that it brings, allows webmasters to drive laser targeted traffic to their sites without having to spend a dime. The problem is that most people are not sure about how to get their sites ranked well. Perhaps, worst yet, they don’t know what not to do, which can results in penalties from the search engines. This article will provide some guidelines on things to avoid when you are looking to optimize your site for the search engines.

SEO: What Not To Do

1. Never Update Your Site: Updating your website is very important to achieving high search engine rankings. If you want your site to stay on page 1000 of Google for your keyword, let it die by never updating it or adding new pages to it.


2. Repeat The Same Keyword Over and Over: It is now harder then ever to achieve high rankings by simply repeating your keywords over and over in your web copy. The search engines have wised up to it. They view it as keyword stuffing and will penalize your website for it. Search engines want their visitors to be able to find websites that will provide real value. If their visitors only find junk sites, created for the search engines, their reputation suffers and people will begin to look elsewhere for the information that they need. This would be bad for everyone.

Many of the search engines are using Latent Semantic Indexing to rank websites. This is simply making sure that your website has related keywords. For example if your site is about dogs and you are looking to get your site ranked for the keyword “dog training,” the search engines would scan your site for related keywords like, “Doberman,” “puppy” and “house training, etc.”

3. Don’t Worry About Incoming Links: Incoming links will make or break your attempts at achieving high search engine rankings. The worst thing that you can do is to not work hard to get incoming links. There are tons of available and free ways to get great links. Article and blog directories, social networking and book-marking sites are great places to begin.


4. Rely Solely on Search Engine Optimization: While successful, search engine optimization can be a fantastic thing, it would not be wise to put all of your eggs in the SEO basket. This is because search engines change and what they want in a website does as well. Also, there will be many people competing against you for the same keywords that you are targeting. Your website can be in the top five one day and then no where to be found the next. This can be devastating to your bottom line. Therefore, it is wise to diversify your traffic sources. Use both paid and free methods.

5. Do What Worked Five Years Ago: The one thing that does hold true regarding the internet is that things will change. Methods that would have sky rocketed your website up the search engines five years ago may no longer work today. That is why it is more important than ever, to keep updated and better yet, one step ahead, of any changes that may potentially affect your business.