What not to do while optimizing for search engines.

Search engine optimization ultimately aims at getting your page in top 20-30 results in major search engine results for if your site is not in first 30 results, it stands, little chance of getting visitor through search results. More than 80% of the surfers depend upon search results while rest either come through referrals or book marks etc. Search engine optimization leads to making the pages on your site more friendly to search engines so as to rank higher on their results. Your web site has to meet the criteria of relevance of the search engines so as to rank higher in their results. In essence search engine optimization comprises of optimizing the title, keywords density, site description, headings and alt tags in your site. Better rankings for your site can be achieved by use appropriate keywords.
In a zeal to get better site ranking and more traffic, many webmasters resort to desperate means as getting traffic through robots, links from shady or blacklisted sites or commit few mistakes while optimizing. In this part, I would comment on few common mistakes committed by web masters while optimizing the site.

First and the quite common mistake committed by webmasters is to spam the search engines. This trick quite successfully worked till about late nineties but we must keep one thing in mind that search engines algorithm is fast evolving. Though, still spiders of search engines can not see as human would see the page, yet they have fast updated themselves to great extent and this trick is easily detected by most reputed search engines and can lead to blacklisting or downgrading of your site.
Another common mistake being committed was to use same color for text as well as background or writing too many keywords without any syntax on the page in small size font in background color. Purpose of this was while humans wont be able to read anything like this, search engines would be fooled getting keywords and place them higher on their results. This is now a days strictly no-no and such sites get banned very quickly. However, I must point out that even now you can see many such sites on top few pages of the results, but rest assured, they wont last their for long.
Decent traffic to any site comes only after you have more than 15000 pages unless you are a official site for a product and traffic is through referrals and not search engines. Another temptation suffered by webmasters is to copy content from a established page and paste the same on their site or indulge in plagiarism. Such copy is very easily detected by most search engines while detecting plagiarism is also happening but is yet to fully evolve. However, this too is not safe.
If your site is new, you wont have many outside incoming links. Don’t be in a hurry to get links. Links with any site that is blacklisted by any search engine will actually do harm to your rankings. Similarly links from any unrelated site will do no good to your site. don’t repeatedly submit the site to search engines, at least not more than once in 2 months or so, if you have to repeat submission.
Do not use keywords in title tags that are not related to your content and don’t try to create a site after duplicating a established site. such thing wont last for more than 2 months if not detected earlier. Creating a domain name that sounds or spells like some other established name would also do no good to you and worse still instill a sense of being second rate site on the visitor. Have a unique name.
Remember search engine optimization does not mean “what to do” alone, it also means “what not to do”. Keep these things in mind while optimizing your site.