SEO is a science and an art and in a sense all of us make mistakes that can be avoided. That’s why companies that have used multiple perspectives on SEO have realized more bang for their bucks. Here are some of the mistakes that I think can be easily avoided:

1. META Tags are important but not that important: There is no question that META tags still matter. However, as Google and other search engines refine their algorithms, these tags are having less and less determining ranking value. Companies that focus too much on META tags waste your money. But beware of those that claim you should not even bother with this!

2. Title Tags and keyword prominence: Many companies use naming conventions such as [Company Name - Keyword...] for their title tags. Why not move the name of the company to the back of the title in order to achieve a higher prominence ratio.

3. Keyword Mapping Matters: I have seen consultants that come in to companies and decide to implement the first day. As mentioned before, SEO is a science and art at the same time, but you can’t play Einstein with some company’s SEO initiative without properly planning first.

4. You can’t do SEO yourself: That is certainly a myth. You absolutely can do your SEO by yourself and you do not have to be super technical to be able to do that. However, you should consult with people who are experts if SEO is not your thing.

5. SEO can’t be tracked so why bother: You should absolutely work with your analytics team to figure out ways to quantify the results that you are seeing as you optimize your pages for search engines. Sometimes having more traffic to your site exposes the other flaws that your pages may have. Work on your landing page if you have to convert better as SEO can get people to your door only.

Many non-technical folks are too nervous to try things that might be slightly technical. Search Engine Optimization is one of those things. It is not too hard to imagine that a person with no or little technical knowledge might think of SEO for rocket science. Basic SEO can be done by anyone, and I mean anyone who is patient enough to do the basic things. Fixing the structure of a page, changing the meta tags, creating contents that have a certain keyword density, can all be done by a non-technical person. Even keyword analysis, to a certain degree can be done by someone with no or limited technical knowledge. Should you do SEO yourself? It depends. While anyone can do SEO, the results might come later than sooner if you choose to do it yourself. Good Professional SEOs often no shortcuts to getting better rankings and traffic to a site, so if your site is mission critical and vital to your business, then you might want to outsource its SEO. If your site is just a hobby for you, then you can probably search optimize your site and have fun while doing it.

When designing a Web Page, many users forget how important the title is to search engines. When I was reading the SEOBook a couple of months ago, it was interesting that a large number of websites on the web are named “untitled.” Aaron was even saying that some of these terms are becoming competitive. The fact of the matter is many Web site owners are not that tech savvy and simply forget to name their pages. But search engines pay extra attention to page titles. SEOs would tell you that first you need to have your keyword as a part of your file name. The name of the file could be something like keyword.htm, which is far better than XYZ.htm. Also, the title should include the keyword you are trying to get ranked for. Whatever you do, remember that your title tags are one of the most important ranking factors to search engines. Keep ‘em unique, keep ‘em targeted, and you are in business!

I can’t stress enough how important it is to make top quality sites if you are thinking about getting ranked on Google or Yahoo!. Obviously, having a site full of high quality content will bring more readers and users in, and they will link to your stories or content, which will help you get ranked higher on search engines. Many online marketers choose quantity over quality just to make a few more bucks. I know a marketer who owns over 1000 domain names for each and every niche that you can think of, and he has this set of pre-made templates with Google Adsense injected into them. But while in general the more is the better, you need to have content that actually provide some value to your visitors. I heard some stories about people who were claiming that content is not king. That is not true at all. Think about it. If you have unique content on your pages that satisfy your readers’ needs, then you are in business. But if you are just copying and pasting from some poor guy that you found on the web, then you are stealing! Not only that, duplicate content is not really what readers are looking for. Unfortunately, we have a lot of that today, but believe me, search engines are getting good at finding the relevant content and its uniqueness. So next time someone says content is not all that matters, tell them to buzz off!

There has been a number of debates about the effects of submitting URLs to Google and Yahoo engines manually or by using a software package. The fact of the matter is, there is no evidence that such act would increase the ranking of websites. Google and Yahoo put emphasis on site quality and keyword optimization. Therefore, if your site is live and you are securing incoming looks to your site, then Google and Yahoo will find it eventually. As a matter of fact, being found organically usually gives you a better chance to get ranked higher on search engines. So, one needs to be careful before messing with software packages such as Hello! Engines or SimpleSEO. This doesn’t mean you can’t use them at all. Just don’t use them to submit a site.

Many of us who don’t know what SEO is all about have this question. We know what SEO is in general, but how do we get started? The best way to get started is obviously by observation. What I mean by that is one should first look at different search engines out there. There are four main engines that one should definitely focus on before going after smaller, less known engines. MSN, Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com are the main search engines that you should know about. Google is obviously the leading search engine, but Yahoo is close second. MSN and Ask.com are trying to compete with these guys for a share of the pie. Obviously, the search-engine market is very important to Microsoft, and you can bet Microsoft will not be satisfied with their current position in the market. Now, it’s time for some observation. Find a topic that interests you and search for that topic using the 4 main search engines. Compare the results! Are they the same? Look at how things are presented on each of those 4 sites. Do you find one particularly more helpful than others? As I mentioned, there is a lot that can be learned by observation, so never stop doing that!

A lot of people nowadays talk about how they use SEO techniques to bring more users to their websites. But what is SEO anyway? SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is a set of techniques that allows a website to be ranked higher by a search engine. Think about it. Most of us have used some search engine, whether it is Google or Yahoo! Search or MSN is not the point, in our lifetime. What happens is that we search for a topic, and we get a set of results. However, sometimes you would get 20000 entries back. Experts claim that most people do go over more than the first 20-30 entries. So, if you happen to be in the other 19980 websites, you are out of luck. Using Search Engine Optimization techniques would allow someone like you to move higher in the rankings and drive more users to your site. So, SEO is indeed important for website owners, and they should at least know about it. But keep that in mind. SEO does not mean writing for search engines for the sake of gaming the system. That is not a good practice and you can lose your users in the long run. Your goal as a SEO should be to provide value to users while optimizing for search engines. The text that you put on your site, the links that you get from other and you link to should all be for the purpose of adding value and enriching your visitors’ experiences with your site and nothing more!