Google is the world's premiere search engine and currently is accounts for about 70% of the total online searches. Many people throw up a website for different reasons and believe that is the end of it. The internet contains so much information that it would take a person several lifetimes to read a fraction of the information, it needs the best organization possible. This task has been accomplished by search engines; the largest of which are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. If you want visitors to your site then you must learn some basic site optimization techniques. Seo or search engine optimization can attract unbelievable numbers of visitors to your site because if it is sitting on the first page then that means your site will potentially be seen thousands of people per day. Sadly, there is a lot of misinformation floating around about SEO and people apply these harmful methods to their sites. Following are three of the most common mistakes that can cause your site the most harm.

The main mistake beginning webmasters make is attempting SEO with keywords that aren't narrowed down. Yes, keywords happen to be an important element of SEO, but if you go on and stuff a high number of keywords in your content, then it will only get you into trouble with the search engines as they will penalize your website for spamming. This will cause your website to decline in the rankings and that also means you will achieve fewer visitors to your site. Your visitors won't like it as they only want sites that are understandable and offer the help they need. You should never commit the blunder of taking text that's not yours from various other sites, as that's not morally correct. You can't just copy content and hope that it's going to help you, because it won't. Your plagiarized content might not be noticed by a few but eventually people will come to know. The other reason why it's a good idea to stay away from this is due to the fact that search engines now know when content has been replicated. Search engines use filters to quarantine sites that use copied content, and if your site gets stuck in there, you won't rank very high. This is the main reason why it's crucial for search engines as well as visitors to like the content that you use.

Avoid shady SEO consultants who indulge into unethical practices. You will find that companies offering SEO services are all over the place these days. Some of these companies are definitely worth working with since they use practical ethical SEO methods, but many others depend on unethical or blackhat SEO to get sites ranked. You won't even know what hit your site until you're de-indexed. That is why it's necessary only to hire SEO professionals that not only have a reputation, but who will also constantly let you know where their progress lies. If they hide anything from you, they're not the right ones to work with. In conclusion, there are many different elements which go into making your SEO successful. It might be tempting to fall for the lure of 'blackhat' techniques, that promise fast results for search engine rankings, but these are never long term solutions. Work on whitehat SEO methods that will bring you long term results that should see a steady increase in constant traffic to your site.