Don't submit your site to a lot of smaller engines or directories (known as FFA or Free For All engines). Avoid offers that read something like "submit your site to 2500 search engines for $20". In fact one of the fastest ways to get a new site indexed is to make a comment on a blog and put your web site address in the comment box place reserved for your url.

Don't submit pages of your site too quickly or use automated tools to do so. The search engines don't like a lot of pages submitted in a short timeframe. Generally, they prefer you submit the home page, then they will crawl the remainder of the site based on their schedule.

Don't submit your site in a routine manner, such as once a week. Avoid solicitations to submit your site once a month for $15 a month. This won't improve your ranking and, in fact, it may get you banned from the engines if done too often.

Don't work with any firm that uses user agent redirection or page cloacking systems. Some SEO firms will setup your web site to detect when a human visitor is viewing versus when a search engine is crawling the site. Based on which type of web user is detected, they display different pages.

These techniques are considered unethical not only by professional SEO firms, but by the major engines. There are exceptions of course for multi-language sites. If your site is found to be using these techniques, your web site may be banned by the search engines. Once banned, it's difficult to get included in the engine, at any pagerank level.

Text manipulation refers to placing hidden text (text the same color font as the background) or small text (so small the visitor can't see it, but search engines can) The search engine spiders are pretty smart and will easily detect if the text is being hidden.

Don't use keywords that you don't legally have a right to use. There may be copyright implications for trying to rank on a competitors brand name, company name or trademark. This rule also applies to Google Adwords advertising.

Keyword stuffing is the process of excessively repeating key phrases in an attempt to get ranked. Key phrases need to be repeated, but strategically. Don't overly stuff a page or an image tag with key phrases.

Avoid the practice of "stuffing meta tags" as well. This involves excessively repeating key phrases in the same meta tag or repeating meta tags more than once.

Don't use irrelevant doorway pages (orphaned pages that are stuffed with key phrases) or pages that are not on topic to your site.

Link farms have become popular and play on the customer's lack of knowledge about link popularity. Link popularity (how many other sites link to your web site) is an important ranking factor to be sure; however, it's not about the quantity, it is about the quality of the links. The solicitation email goes something like "Get hundreds of inbound links to your web site and boost your ranking in the search engines for $80 a month." Don't fall for this, it's a waste of your money.

Avoid companies that claim they have a "special business relationship" with Google or Yahoo. This implies that they have an inside track and get your site rank by using this inside track. There are certification programs offered by the major search engines. But, I can assure you that even being a certified Google partner doesn't get you any insider secrets. There are benefits, but there is no automatic top 10 rankings ticket.

No one can guarantee a 1st place position in an optimization strategy. Depending on the key phrase and the competitive nature of the target industry, obtaining top 10 can be easy or very difficult. But no one can guarantee great rankings.

Don't use automatically generated pages. These are pages that are created from a program based on key phrases you enter. The auto generated pages have the same structure and content except for the key phrase you are targeting. Search engines can spot these a mile away and will stop listing your site.

Don't create copies of your main site with similar content in an effort to get ranking. If the sites are too similar, the search engines can detect this too.

Many gimmicks surround the practice of optimisation. The unwitting buyer can easily get trapped. Apply the "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" rule.

The Result

If your site is written search engine friendly, targeted to your selected keyword phrases and submitted as necessary to the search engines, you can do very well in the search engine ranking. Search engine optimisation is a complex and time consuming game. It is not for the faint of heart. Patienceis the key.

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