Five Most Common SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid   by Lesley Komlos

In order to give your website great search engine appeal, it is essential that you have in place sound optimization practices that are going to provide your web site with the visibility that you hope to gain for your target population. However, as with any other practices, there are common mistakes that are made, which you want to avoid when it comes to SEO, and these are the five most common mistakes you want to make sure you aren't making.

1. Failure to implement targeted and optimized keywords and phrases. Any way you put it, without keywords there really is no optimization of your site. If you want to avoid having a site that is gaining cobwebs waiting for visitors, you should have keyword phrases for all of the content present.

2. Poorly written content that isn't updated regularly and doesn't follow your niche. If you are selling hand baskets, yet optimizing your content to fresh flowers, you aren't going to exactly get the traffic you are expecting. For leads that can be converted, your SEO should consist of well written content that you update regularly and is relevant to your actual business.

3. Black Hat optimization methods. If you aren't taking SEO seriously, you aren't going to get serious results. At the same time, if you are using practices that are frowned upon, you can expect rejection from search engines and your site to wither away.

4. Meta tags used incorrectly or not at all. Meta tags may be a bit more difficult to understand if you aren't a web site designer, but that doesn't mean you should ignore them. Metadata is actually key to proper SEO, and you should be giving your metadata the optimization that will direct the searches right to your site.

5. Poor navigation on a site that is designed poorly. Just because you are focusing on a few keywords doesn't mean that you want to ignore the actual design of your site. There are a lot of different elements of site design that you should focus on, and a good design will ensure optimal SEO.

If you have a site but aren't taking on SEO, there is great chance your site isn't going to get attention at all - and what good is a site with no viewers. You should steer very clear of these mistakes to ensure your SEO practices are always right on target.