Keyword overkill

Don't over optimize a webpage for a keyword, or keyword phrase, or the search engines will frown upon you.

Don't over tweak your keywords

Whilst optimizing a webpage for keywords is an important part of SEO, many SEOs and webmasters spend too much time writing and tweaking content hoping to get better results from keyword tweaking alone. This is a common mistake. The more time that you spend on tweaking keywords, leaves you with less time getting more backlinks, writing new content and analysing what else needs attention on your website(s).

Don't concentrate too hard

Many people recommend building a website around a certain keyword. They suggest establishing a uncompetitive keyword, buy a domain name containing the keyword, and then write content, and optimize all of it for the keyword. This is not a good idea in today's ever changing internet. Websites are not built around keywords, they are built around topics. If a website concentrates on a keyword it will quickly exhaust the keyword. A topic targeted website can constantly expand and evolve to cover the topic, and incorporate other topics if necessary down the line.

It is easy to find websites that are total concentrated on a single keyword. Everything about the website screams this keyword. Typically the content is difficult to read as the keyword is stuffed into every sentence or paragraph. This is not naturally written content, and search engines will penalize for this.

When researching and starting a new website, concentrate on a topic, and not a keyword. Buy a domain name suitable for the topic, and not the primary keywords. Start the website by concentrating on the primary keyword. Research and write about this first. Then move onto other areas. Write and research about secondary keywords. Monitor which keywords and working well. Study your log files. You will always have people finding your website by searching for terms you are not targeting. If the terms are related, write content to target these keywords. You might as well target these searches.

Don't keyword stuff

When writing or optimizing your content, do not force your keyword into each sentence unnecessarily. Not only does it make the text awkward to read, but search engines will identify this and penalise you. Write the text naturally. Mention your keyword regularly, but naturally. Always try and include the keyword in the first and last paragraphs of the page. This suggests to the search engine spiders that the page is concentrated to the keyword throughout.