The Alt Tag is meant to be a textual description of image it is attached to. There is nothing wrong with tailoring Alt tag to meet your keyword goals IF tag is still understandable and if it appropriately describes image. The offence occurs when an Alt tag has obvious keyword repetition/filler that a search engine can key in on as spam.

7: Comment Tag Stuffing Comment Tags are used to include useful design comments in background source code (html) when creating a web page. These tags should be used only for adding technical instructions or reminders; however, these tags were often used to artificially increase keyword count for particular search phrases.

At one time there was some argument that this technique worked, but it has always been a "Black Hat" search engine optimisation technique that even then could result in placement penalties. Nowadays this technique will not help an optimisation campaign, if anything it will be ignored or produce a negative result.

8: Over Reliance on Meta Tags Meta Tags is a broad term for descriptive tags that appear in most web pages and are used to provide search engines with a concept of page topic. The most common tags are description and keyword tags.

At one time, extinct search engines such as Infoseek relied a great deal on Meta Tags and many took advantage of this factor to manipulate rankings with relative ease. In today's far more advanced climate search engines place cautious weight on Meta Tags and when considering rankings Metas play only a fractional role. Some webmasters still consider Meta Tags ‘end-all and be-all' of ranking producers and forget to optimise rest of their web page for search engines. With this line of thinking they miss that search engines place far more importance on body text (or visible text) of web page. This is a critical error that will ultimately lead to low or insignificant rankings.

Note: An extremely common example of Meta Tag over-reliance are web sites that have been designed totally graphically and are devoid (or nearly so) of html text that a search engine can read. A web page such as this will have no body text to index and may only provide a small amount of relevance to web page which ultimately leads to poor rankings.

Over reliance on Meta Tags does not produce intentional search engine penalties, however, simple act of ignoring other ranking principles often means a lower ranking.

For more detailed information on how to use all Tags more effectively, download our book “Start at Beginning” here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

9: Duplicate Content This tactic is blatant Spam and is very common today. Essentially Webmaster will create a web site and then create duplicates of each page and optimise them differently in order to obtain varying placements. By doing this you are saturating search engine databases with content that is essentially eating valuable bandwidth and hard drive space.

Duplicate content is a dangerous game often played by full-time marketers accustomed to trying to attain placements in aggressive markets. Avoid this tactic like plague unless you are willing to sustain serious ranking damages if you get caught - which you likely will.

10: Automatic Submission Automatic Submission is use of automated software to submit a website to search engines automatically and often repeatedly.

At Enable UK word ‘automated' is a disturbing when used in reference to search engine optimisation and submission. The fact is that automated campaigns are not as effective as manual (by hand) ones.

Automatic Submission Tools can only submit to search engines that allow such submissions. These search engines make majority of their profit from surfers like you viewing their advertising, be this at their web site or by emails you will receive as a result of submitting to them. Automated tools have also been known to repeatedly submit sites and sometimes each individual page within a site and if a search engine is submitted to too often it will consider submission as Spam and website being submitted will not fair well.

The more established and popular search engines do not allow automated submissions, in fact submission companies continually try to upgrade their software to try and subvert search engines' latest effort to stop their programs.

All in all, this leaves submitter in an unstable position where they may or may not have their submission ignored. The cardinal rule of search engines… submit ONCE and it may take a while (usually no more than 2 or 3 months) but site will get spidered at some point. If within a few months a site is not listed, then resubmit. As for major engines like Google… be patient and definitely don't submit more than once if you can help it.

I hope that this article has told you a lot of things you already know and that you have not already fallen into any of these traps. If you are intending to outsource your Internet marketing campaigns, be extremely wary of any search engine optimisation company that suggests any of these tactics. Some of these tactics may work in short term; however, that outcome is not only rare it is also a great way to get banned from major search engines completely.

For detailed information on how to optimise your web site effectively, without upsetting search engines, download our guide “Start at Beginning” here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

There's a lot of information available about how to incorporate keyword phrases into your HTML and Meta tags, and how to establish inbound links to your web site. Both topics are covered in depth in our guide “Start at Beginning” (click here for an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html). But that's only half battle.

Search engines do look at your tags, html coding and links, but they also look very closely at your text content. If key phrases you have used in your tags and links aren't used in your text copy, your site won't be indexed for those key phrases and your customers won’t find your web site listed under key phrases they are using.

But writing key phrase rich content without compromising readability and flow isn’t easy. Readability is paramount to attracting and retaining visitors and after all, it's visitors that buy your product or service, not search engines.

By following these simple guidelines, you'll be able to overhaul content of your web site and ensure that it's pleasing to both search engines and your visitors.

1. Divide and categorise. Once you have decided which pages constitute your core pages and which are complementary, further divide your complementary page into categories. For example, divide your products into types (i.e.: digital cameras) then subdivide them into smaller groups (Konica, Fuji, etc). This way, you'll be able to incorporate very specific keyword phrases into your text content, thereby capturing a very targeted market. If you're working on an existing web site, re-title each page with its key point, offering, or benefit using your key phrases. For further information on best way to select targeted key phrases, download our guide “Start at Beginning”. Click here to read an excerpt: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

2. Use Key Phrases rather than Keywords There’s far too much competition to waste time trying to optimise for single keywords and they are rarely, if ever, really indicative of what your web site is about. Research has also shown that Internet users are becoming more search-savvy and are searching using more and more specific key phrases. They're learning that by being more specific, they find what they're looking for much faster and don’t have to wade through oceans of irrelevant results to find it.

Although using key phrases rather than single words may mean that you get fewer visitors, these visitors will be looking for exactly what you are offering and are therefore more likely to convert into customers.

3. Pick most relevant Key Phrases Don't try to include every key phrase on every page. Focus on one or two key phrases on each page and make sure that they are relevant to product, service or information content that is being offered there. Try to include full key phrase in copy using words in correct order but don’t over use each phrase and don’t let them detract from overall readability or flow of text.

4. Use Key Phrase text in Links If you use your key phrases in text links to relevant pages within your web site, when search engines look at your site, they'll see that pages are related. So on product page A, include a text link to product page B. For example, on a page displaying Fuji Digital Cameras, you may add a link at bottom of page that says, “You may also be interested in Konica Digital Cameras”. If you link this text to a page entitled “Konica Digital Cameras” search engines will see this as a “vote” from page A for page B’s content about Konica Digital Cameras.

5. Use Key Phrases In Headings Search engines, as well as customers, rely on headings to scan your web sites information. Headings are given quite a lot of weight by search engines when categorising your web site, so although it sounds obvious, make sure your headings are in text rather than graphic format and try to include your primary key phrases in them. If possible, also break up your content using subheadings through out your page. This will not only improve readability of page, because it will help customers scan your information, but will also provide some secondary key phrase opportunities. Just remember not to overdo it. It's not easy to find balance between content written for search engines and content written for customers, but if you take time to implement steps above, having well written content on your web site will pay huge dividends over time.