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While there are a lot of things you SHOULD do regarding your SEO efforts, there are also plenty of things you should NOT do as well. The Internet is rampant with advice; both good and bad and it is up to you to determine whether or not the advice is worth taking. The problem is that a lot of advice, regardless of what topic you’re talking about, is not exactly perfect and when it comes to SEO, well, just say that advice is all over the place, from the good and the bad to the downright ugly.

Here are some things that you should NEVER be doing on your website; I don’t care if it came from some self-proclaimed guru who charges thousands of dollars a month. If you don’t believe me, then just try these on your site and watch the negative implications that will happen. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

One of the biggest mistakes people make, first and foremost is not realizing that SEO is an ever-changing entity. What worked three years ago, may not work today. Case in point: meta tags. It used to be that all you needed to do was put your keywords within your keyword meta tag and the search engines would find you, believe you to be relevant, and rank you accordingly.

Today, you’re lucky to get a glance from a popular search engine at your meta tags.

Another method that is still used by websites today (most likely sitting in the back of the pack or, worse yet, not even indexed at all), is that of the “hidden link”. When you link to another site, you essentially give that other site a “vote of confidence”. This is still fine (within reason) but where the problem arises, is when you hide that link. I still can’t believe that to this day, hidden links are suggested to those who want to do legitimate SEO. When you have a link on your site that is the same color as the background of your site, meaning that regular humans can’t read it with their eyes but search engines can, you’ve just stumbled across a way to get your website penalized.

Another piece of advice that tends to find its way onto unbeknownst website owners sites is that of the pixel. This is a simple 1×1 pixel located on a site that contains a link. Fancier than the hidden link above but still against the rules.

Never, ever hide a link on your site.

Second, don’t create a doorway page. If you don’t know what the heck a doorway page is then if anything, read up on it so that you’re educated. Doorway pages are web pages created strictly for the purpose of housing keywords. The search engines see this prior to coming to your site, and once again, your visitors never even know it is there.

Third, exchanging links with anyone and everyone. It is important that you do exchange links yes, but it should only constitute a minority (less than 50%) of the overall links on your site. And above all, when you do decide to trade links with someone, make absolutely certain that the site you’re linking to is A) on a related topic as your site and B) actually offers up some value to your website visitors.

I personally am very, very, very picky about who I link to with all of my websites. If I look at your site and it’s poorly constructed, has ads all over the place, limited information and is just downright meant to do nothing for someone, then you’re booted. I’ve even run across sites that look very nice on the outside but when you click on one of their “interior” links are then taken to a different website all together. Nice try buddy, but no way am I even glancing your direction

Fourth, duplicate content. A LOT has been talked about this of late because there are two sides to each story. One group says that duplicate content penalties don’t exist because if that were true, then CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, etc., would all be penalized for showing the same Associated Press content on each of their sites.

While technically this is true (there are so many other factors that go into it), here are some things to consider.

First, a LOT of people get their content from eZine directories - these house articles that other people have written that you too can use on your site. If there are a lot of people who use the same article, one group says that you’ll get penalized by the search engines and the other group says that it doesn’t matter, all that matters is that you don’t have the same content on YOUR site.

I personally don’t use a lot of ezine articles myself, every so often I’ll find a really great one that I can’t resist but just like your links, balance it out. If you place one ezine article on your site then write two more of your own that are completely unique.

These are just a few things to avoid. My suggestion to you is that if you are considering implementing ANY kind of technique, REGARDLESS of who it came from, check the rules of each search engine. They don’t keep this kind of stuff secret you know.

Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
Yahoo’s Webmaster Guidelines
MSN’s Guidelines