Not many web design firms know how or have time to optimize a site successfully, no matter what they tell you. They might feel it is outside their core business, or they might believe it is not part of "design process". Consequently, your site can be launched for many months without search engines having any idea it exists. Some web development firms don’t include even most basic META tags in your site code when building it. Or those that do include META tags without close consultation with you, resulting in wrong search terms used and poor performance. This is quite typical! Remember that search engine optimization is a relatively new science and requires both client interaction and constant monitoring to be successful.

The bottom line? If your designer can’t show you high rankings they’ve achieved for other clients, they won’t be able to optimize your site properly. Search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have sprung up to fill need for these services. Many SEO's will work either directly with you or with your web site designer to ensure your site gets exposure it deserves in most popular search engines and directories. Find a specialist with a good track record and reap results.

Remember, search engine users generally only explore first 10 or 20 sites in search results. If you site isn't in top 20, you won't be found, it's as simple as that. Always include search engine optimization into your marketing budget or your site could be as effective as a billboard at end of a dead end street.

Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index. If you expect to rank well for a particular keyword or phrase, it’s not too much to expect to find that keyword or phrase within your site is it?

4) Submitting to 1,000 Search Engines

I love this one. I’ve lost count of how many banner ads or web sites I’ve seen boasting "We’ll submit your site to 1,000 search engines!" I can’t believe hype is still prevalent that you need to submit a web site to thousands of search engines in order to receive traffic. This is just NOT TRUE.

In fact, studies show that approximately 90% of search traffic still comes from 10 major U.S. search engines and directories (listed here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/List_of_Search_Engines.htm ). Companies that advertise submission to thousands of search engines are usually including in that list minor engines or directories that utilize databases of major engines anyway (so don’t require submission) or a large number of Free For All (FFA) sites. Submitting your site to FFA pages can damage your site’s reputation in search engines, because they consider FFA sites to be of very low quality and utilizing spamdexing techniques in an attempt to falsely inflate a site’s link popularity. I’ve even seen examples of sites being banned from a search engine for having their pages listed on FFA sites by ill-informed webmasters without site owner’s knowledge.

If you are targeting specific geographic markets, you might like to submit your site to most popular regional search engines in those countries, but fact is that most people worldwide continue to use U.S. versions of search engines such as Yahoo and AltaVista despite fact that there are local versions available. The bottom line? Get your site listed on 10 most popular search engines and directories and you will have major worldwide traffic sources covered.

5) Resubmitting Too Soon and Too Often

So you’ve optimized your site and submitted it to most important search engines. But it’s been three weeks and you haven’t received any traffic. Time to resubmit, right? WRONG. Depending on search engine, they can take up to twelve weeks to include your site in their index. Each search engine and directory work to their own time frame. You need to check their average submission times (a chart is here: http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/search_engine_indexing.htm) and be patient.

So when you’re in, what then? You should regularly submit to ensure you’re ranked above your competitors, maybe once a month or once a week, right? WRONG AGAIN. Once you’re in a search engine’s database, there is no need to resubmit your site. It’s pointless actually, because they already know about your site and their robot is scheduled to revisit and reindex all sites in database on a regular basis. Resubmitting wastes everybody’s time and can actually get your URL permanently banned from a search engine for "spamdexing".

The only time you need to resubmit your site to a search engine is if your URL changes or if your domain suddenly drops out of their database entirely. NOT if your ranking drops, NOT if your content changes, but if domain is actually nowhere to be found in index (this can happen from time to time as search engines Spring clean their databases). A good SEO will monitor your rankings regularly (monthly is fine) and only resubmit when absolutely necessary.

So those are five most common SEO mistakes. Any sound familiar? Don’t worry, you’re in good company. Now that you’ve recognized problem areas and are better equipped with correct information, you’ll be able to reverse damage.