When it comes to promoting your website, you might think that anything you can do to get people to your website is worthwhile. However, you should think again because some shady practices will actually hurt you. Also, other SEO tactics could reduce the amount of potential visitors simply because you do not have a clear understanding of how the Internet and search engines work. Read the following tips on what not to do when promoting your website and if you are doing some of these things stop immediately and learn how to effectively promote your site.

1. Too Many Images

Search engines search for text, so if your website is composed mostly of photographs your results will be significantly lower if ranked at all. Its ok to have good photos, just make sure you have really good content as well.

2. Keyword Phrases

Keywords phrases are a great way to get more traffic. However, if you are unaware of the importance of keyword phrases or unsure how to use them effectively then you might be doing yourself in. Learn about the importance of keyword phrases and how to get them to work for you.

3. Excessive Keywords

Using too many keywords with no clear understanding of how those keywords influence search engine rankings can also cause you problems. Before you start listing hundreds of keywords in your content, learn how to properly utilize this tool to get it to work for you and not against you.

4. Links are Difficult to Find

Make sure your website is clearly laid out and any links to other pages are obvious and easy to get to. Too many times links are hidden and people cannot find them, so they simply leave.

5. Information is hard to find

Another significant problem is if information on your products or how to buy them is obscured or difficult to find. Make sure everything is out in the open and obvious.

6. Frames

Search engines do not return websites with frames very well because all of the pages link to one URL. If your website has frames, remove them as they'll certainly have a negative impact on your search engine ranking efforts.

7. Spamming Search Engines

This is a very bad idea because if you are trying to trick the search engines regarding the true content on your page, you may be doing yourself more harm than good because the search engines may blacklist your site. Avoid doing this at all costs, especially on a domain that is important to you.

8. Website Should Work In all Browsers

Not everyone uses Internet Explorer, so make sure the web page opens in any browser. If not, you will be eliminating a lot of potential users.

9. Wrong Optimization

Often times people work hard on optimizing their web pages using certain keywords. However, you must be sure the keywords you are using are relevant to your market and your products. There are programs that will help you make sure you are choosing the right keywords for your web page. If you optimize wrong, you wont get visitors.

10. Over-submitting Pages

Do not submit too many pages to the search engines in one day. The reason for this is if you submit too many pages they may be simply ignored, and in fact many search engines only accept one page per day. So, submit one page per day and be patient. An even better idea than submitting is building up your incoming links as search engines will find these and follow them to your website.