SEO Mistakes

Below are some common SEO mistakes and land mines to avoid when trying to promote your site.

Avoid Generic Labels
Important parts of your site including page tabs should be keyworded appropriately. Never use "Home" for your home page. Use a keyword or keywords that describe your page such as "Rapid Weight Loss" or whatever it is.  Links should also be described using appropriate keywords instead of "click here". In short, everything revolves around relevant and descriptive keywords.

Failing to Validate your Site
Be sure someone runs your site through the W3C Validator to be sure your site's code isn't a mess

Duplicate Meta Tags
Don't copy and paste your meta tags from your home page to every other page on your site. Each page is different, so make sure your meta tags reflect this.

Irrelevant Domain Names
Your domain name should describe your business. If you must live with a random or generic company name like acmeproducts.com then at least buy other domains that do describe your business and create landing pages using keywords that people will actually use in a search.

Invisible Text
Stuffing a page full of keywords that are the same color as the background can get a page flagged as "spamdexing" and have it temporarily or permanently blocked.

Keyword Stuffing
Using keywords that may attract visitors which are unrelated to the site's content. For example, using the adjective "nude" next to a popular celebrity's name inside a web site for auto parts.

Doorway Pages
A doorway page is a landing page which contains no valuable content, but only keywords and a button to "enter site".  Unless a landing page contains relevant content, it could backfire and cause demotion.

Duplicate Content
Cloning a web site is a big mistake. It may sound like a good idea, but Google can demote sites which display duplicate content.