10 Most Common SEO Mistakes - Stone Age to Present

SEO offers business owners a significant way of promoting their products and services online. While SEO is easy, it is also generally misunderstood as something that requires major capital. True that SEO can provide your business some major benefits, but if mis-treated it can also go in the opposite direction... leaving you and your business in a lurch.

Search engines have their own rules and guidelines set to be followed. Ethical SEO firms and SEO experts make sure that they follow them to a large extent, if not completely. And while some of us are on the go, following these set of rules, we tend to make some common mistakes that can lead us into the deep dark ditch of penalization.

So here's a look at some of the most common SEO mistakes made from times past to the day present:

1. Copy Cats: Copied content, either plagerized or otherwise will simply not do. Unique and original is always better. Be it short or long, just make sure that the content on your website or blog is originally yours to begin with. Otherwise... well, face the consequences!

2. Linking Softwares: Trying to link your website automatically to various websites and search engines via some software can get you banned forever.

3. Duplicate Meta Tags: Using the same titles and descriptions throughout your website is... well... wrong!

4. Keyword Stuffing: Don't try and increase your keyword density by over using the keywords throughout the page. You should know by now that this will get you penalized.

5. Link Farm Programs: Participating in link exchange and link farm programs will possibly lead you into bad neighborhood, might link you to scam websites and will surely get you penalized... need I say more?!

6. Cloaking: As old as SEO itself... cloaking text using same color as the site background and hiding keywords just doesn't work anymore. Will make you zero instead of a hero.

7. Flash-based Website: The search engines refuse to crawl flash-based websites, so avoid making it completely with flash. Also try using images and graphics that take less time to load to keep both the visitors and search engines happy.

8. Doorway Pages: This one's from stone age too and must be avoided at all costs. Try the Landing page instead, its healthy and profitable.

9. Over-Optimized Web Pages: Too much of everything is bad. So is the case with SEO. Don't over optimize your web pages, instead keep them fresh and easy to read.

10. Duplicate Content: Like duplicate meta tags, this one's a goner too. Only spread duplicate content across several pages of your website or various domains if you're looking for some penalized fun ;)

So there you have it... 10 most common SEO mistakes from the SEO Stone age to the present day. And with this we end the Murderous March series for now. Until next time, Happy clicking! :)