It doesn’t really matter what kind of website you have or what online business you run, you’ll always need targeted traffic. To accomplish this, your site must rank high when it comes to search engines. If you are good at your SEO, you will find that you not only get the traffic you want but your conversion rate will increase, too. However, if you are new to the whole SEO concept, then you might make mistakes that will harm your site in the long run.

Your aim should be for the search engines to like you, you don’t want them to ban your site. That’s why you need to learn common mistakes people make so that you can increase your chances of success. It’s important to read on for some common mistakes that people often make that kill their chances of getting the traffic they want.

Too Many Keywords

Webmasters just starting out often make the SEO mistake of inputting far too many keywords into their text that aren’t specific. It’s true that keywords are a crucial aspect of search engine optimization, but if you just use a bunch of them the search engines may give you penalties as they will consider your site spam. This will have the effect of causing your website to decline in the search engine rankings, and that means you’ll lose a considerable amount of traffic. Your traffic will become displeased as they’re more interested in the information they can read and that offers something they can use. It’s essential for you to avoid committing the other mistake which is to use content that’s not yours, as you’ll want to consider ethics.

Stolen Content

If you try to take content that’s not yours in the hopes that it will assist you with reaching your goals, you’re mistaken. It may appear as though there are no repercussions at first, but it will hurt you once someone discovers that you’ve stolen your content. And the biggest downside to it is that the search engines have gone smart and they know the difference between original content and duplicate one. There are filters in place for this sort of thing, and that’s the last place you want your website to end up if you hope to rank high. Therefore, put in the effort to create unique content that’s not only appealing to the visitors but also to the search engines.

Never listen to SEO practitioners who tout SEO techniques that don’t use good ethics. You will find that companies offering SEO services are all over the place these days. If you find a company that’s ethical, work with them, but some companies don’t have that kind of ethic and they’ll do anything to get ranked. The search engines could ban your site and you wouldn’t even realize it until later. That is why it’s necessary only to hire SEO professionals that not only have a reputation, but who will also constantly let you know where their progress lies. If they hide anything from you, they’re not the right ones to work with.

All in all, just make sure your site is not heavily based on flash and when you have images on your site, don’t forget to use the ALT tag. If you can avoid committing these blunders, you’ll shoot through the search engine ranks and you’ll avoid ever being banned.