What you shouldn't do for search engine optimization.  Some simple things to avoid when trying to get higher rankings.   By John Bolduan RealWebMarketing.com

There's been a lot of confusion as to what search engine optimization really is. In fact, many professionals who used to call themselves SEO's now call themselves search marketers. That's probably a good thing. The term SEO has a negative feel because of all the bad techniques that some companies have used. It's these techniques that have caused search engines to ban sites, deliver irrelevant results and change algorithms more often. As a result of this, I thought I would go over some things you shouldn't do when optimizing your website for more visitors.

Invisible text

What some people do to optimize a site is to include keywords over and over again at the bottom of the page which matches the color of the page so you don't see it. Early on, search engines didn't see this either and looked at it as legitimate text. Search engines can now spot this automatically and then will warn a real person of the violation and get your site banned. Once your site is banned, it can be difficult to get back in, so don't use this outdated, bad search engine optimization trick. 

Repeating one keyword in the keyword meta-tag.

This is an often abused bad technique by people that don't know any better. It may not get you banned but your ranking will probably suffer as a result. This thinking revolves around keyword density on the page. Search engines don't pay as much attention to the keyword meta information as much as they used to, partly because of this poor technique.

Duplication of content

When some people create a website, they think that if a page gets a good ranking it can be used again. They think that all you have to do is make a couple of minor changes and a search engine will see it differently and rank that one highly too. Nothing could be further from the truth! Duplicating content that is essentially the same can get you into trouble. Not only is it frowned upon by search engines, but your visitor will be disappointed with the same pages over and over again. 

Lifting content from another high ranking site.

This happens more often than you can believe and it makes for poor search engine optimization. Some webmasters think that if they have the same content and tags, then it will rank highly. That's not true. There is more to a high ranking than just what is on one page. Of course, this practice is ethically wrong and violates copyrights. When you do this you invite lawsuits and potential banning from the search engines. Create your own content instead!

Cloaking or redirection

There are techniques that can hide what the actual website has with pages that have text or links to get a higher ranking. This along with redirection is a bad idea. You'll find some quickie search engine optimization companies using these ideas. Remember, they don't care about you long-term, only high rankings now. They won't be there when your site has been removed from search results for using tricks like this. Anytime that someone is creating other pages with text, links and not much content, you're looking at some scheme like this.

As I've talked about before, human beings always want a quick answer to a problem they have, in this case, low search rankings. All of the above techniques are bad ways of promoting your site and do not come under the heading of real search engine optimization. They are poor substitutes for creating a website with good content that's easy to use. When trying to optimize, it's good to check with someone who has ethical web marketing experience. They can help you avoid these pitfalls and eventually getting you the top of the search results page.