Search Engine Optimization is a tricky field, full of confusing rules that aren’t really rules and a basic environment in which a campaign can never, ever be put on auto-pilot (just ask the pros).

In this context, it is incredibly common to find companies committing gross and detrimental mistakes in their search engine marketing campaigns, especially when they have chosen to hire the services of people that are only minimally trained in the field (but perhaps knew more about the subject than the person hiring; a necessary though not sufficient condition).

Here we’ll tackle the ten biggest follies witnessed in many such online marketing campaigns, trying to point out the reasons and consequences for such predicaments:

1. Publishing duplicate content: what could make you look more amateurish?  Nothing, that’s what!  You will take a hard hit in terms of search engine placement (as the engines penalize sites with duplicate content) and will be written off by many consumers as either copy-cats or too lazy to come up with something new…neither of which does you any good.
2. Overloading keywords: another amateur’s trick, this time with less liability of being labeled a fraud but equal liability of being penalized by the search engines.  Not only is it important that a company choose their keywords wisely (not trying to dominate a keyword that is simply too broad or contested), but furthermore that they be conservative with its employment: 4% to 6% usually does the trick; anything over 10% is total overkill.
3. Focusing off-site rather than on-site: this is the folly of those who are too timid and indecisive to actually get down to the work of improving the site itself.  Though it is incredibly important to build up a strong army of (quality!) backlinks, etc., it is incredibly important to guarantee that your site has outstanding original content, balanced use of wisely-chosen keywords, clever page titles and names, and convincing meta-tags.
4. Failing to develop in-bound links: this is basically the counterpoint of the previous mistake, and proves the fact that a good balance needs to be struck between on-site and off-site work.  If you have been generous enough to host links to other sites, make sure you are protecting your own and demanding corresponding links or generating them one way or another back to your site.
5. Abandoning SEO before you see results: the flaw of the impatient!  Search Engine Marketing isn’t akin to getting the genie to come out of the lamp: it’s a process that may be slow to gather steam, but will be enormously important and effective once it does.
6. Expecting too much too soon: again, this drives at the same point as the last mistake.  You will most likely not shoot up to the first spot on Google when conducting a search with your coveted keyword after the first month of implementing search engine marketing at your company.
7. Going for keywords that are too competitive: this gets back to an idea brought up in point 2 above, and essentially boils down to excessive and misguided ambition.  On the one hand you may be vying for a keyword that another company with a much larger SEO budget is claiming, or you may be literally spitting in the wind—trying to claim a keyword that is too general for any one site to have it on lockdown.
8. Complicated navigation structure on-site: this is one of the worst and most elementary mistakes to be made: think of your business as a city, and your website as its roadmap.  Try to create sensible, thematic divisions for your site, and to prevent any particular page from being considerably “buried” within the site (aka many clicks away from the home page).
9. Poor landing pages: just as you want to make getting around your page easy, you want to make the content interesting!  This is especially true for landing pages, those to which people are brought from search engines or through links on other sites.  Landing pages should be the most carefully groomed and tidily packaged of all the pages on your site.
10. Links from poor quality sites: in keeping with the old-fashioned notion that you can judge somebody by the company they keep, links from poor quality sites will reflect poorly on you and lower your market credibility.  Be proactive about getting other sites to link to you, but don’t lower your standards so low that you start to get yourself muddy!