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Based on the real-life experiences of a real-time marketer, this report discusses the five most frequent pitfalls of search engine optimization. This report also discusses the reasons why it's important to optimize the site at all. It's included in our Web 2.0 Collection because company websites can be an important platform for how companies communicate both intentionally and unintentionally with their key audiences of customers, partners and employees.

The five most frequent pitfalls?

1. Optimizing for keywords that nobody searches for - this was a particularly painful lesson for this proud content engineer. It was my wake up call.

2. Way too many keywords - one client came with a list of over 100 words they wanted to optimize their single product website for. Needless to say, we helped them use their competitors' websites and the Google sktool to tune the list and get it into a manageable and probably more important - actionable - shape.

3. Aiming all search engines at the root page - search engine optimization is about more than the front page of the site. Relevant content can be found and should be found somewhere on every page.

4. Thinking that all search engines matter - there are 800 pound gorillas and then there are 8000 pound gorillas. Search engines are the latter. Google matters. The others wish they did.

5. Not optimizing at all - danger Will Robinson! It's not just a one time thing. Don't you think your competitors will notice that your site has jumped from 53rd position to 2nd? Maintaining an optimization culture is the only way to assure continued successes and relevancy.

This report is also a great companion piece to the Content Engineering report.