Although the online marketplace is flooded with service providers in this field, very few actually know the dos and don'ts of this process. SEO can be a very rewarding investment for those venturing into web business promotion. However, the use of wrong techniques can get your site supplemented, blacklisted or even banned by search engines.

The following is a list of activities that should be avoided by optimizers in order to be successful with this process:

1) When creating meta tags, do not stuff them with keywords. Your keywords and phrases should be incorporated judiciously and in an acceptable manner. Meta tags should not be created just for the process of optimization; they should have some relevancy too.

2) Avoid the use of keywords in hidden text of your web pages. Even though these words will not be visible to the lay user, search engines do crawl them and index pages for better rankings. This technique is regarded unethical because this text matter usually is not pertinent to the page in question.

3) The keywords of your business should be effortlessly incorporated in the content of your web pages. Do not overdo their usage as the content then looks highly promotional in nature.

4) Link building is one of the main off-page services of search engine optimization. When you set out to link with other websites, avoid being linked to 'bad neighbourhoods' like link farms. You cannot stop any site from linking to you. But, you can regulate the quality of sites you reach out to. If you link your site to a link farm, there are chances that the search engines might ban you.

5) Do not get into link exchange with blacklisted or banned sites. By doing so, you stand the risk of being penalised or even blacklisted by a search engine network.

As an optimizer, you are solely responsible for the 'character' of your website. Even though not everything can be controlled or regulated at your end, you should always tread the acceptable path and do away with the lure of quick traffic or revenues.