Google, Yahoo and MSN are the major search engines right now and each of them have lots of rules and algorithms to try and ensure the best results are returned in searches. The purpose of search engine optimization is to have your site rank high in relevant categories. But, there are some tactics to avoid as the major engines see them as unscrupulous and will punish you if they think you are deceiving searchers. Here are a few big ones to avoid.

1.    “Cloaking” redirects, which display different content to search engines and to your visitors.
2.    Having broken links or 404 redirects.
3.    Having duplicate content on your site.
4.    Having non-relevant or artificial links to your site, such as with link farms.
5.    Cross linking to falsely increase a site’s popularity. This is when the owner of multiple sites links all of his or her sites together, even if they aren’t relevant to one another.

Doing any of these along with a number of other “black hat” search engine optimization activities can lead to your site being banned or dropped from search engine rankings. If that were to happen then not only will you lose traffic immediately, you may never get linked to again because other sites will not want to be associated with yours.