We all know what search engine optimisation is. Done well, it will boost your company's online visibility. Done badly and it will land you in hot water.

Many companies that have invested in good organic SEO strategies are now enjoying high rankings, greater traffic and more sales. Often they can slash their marketing budgets because their Google exposure negates the need for expensive PPC campaigns and off line advertising.

But there are people out there who are impatient and want immediate results. That is not something that you'll get with SEO and to get around it, they dabble in the dark arts and black hat SEO.

If you do that or use an 'SEO Company' that does that, you are going to be in for a nasty shock.

Link Building

This is one of the most important aspects of any SEO strategy. Every link to your website is like a vote to its relevancy to your keyword/topic. Google therefore uses these as an indicator to how well your website should rank for that given term.

It takes time to build them naturally and therefore many people are tempted to cut corners by buying in links.

Don't.

This could seriously damage your website. Go natural, it's the only way:

• Claim your Google Local listing
• Try to get a link from your local Chamber of Commerce
• Ask suppliers and clients to link to you
• Write blogs, articles and press releases that link back to your website
• Use good online directories

Of course, natural building takes time and energy. You may find it's too much for one person to cope with so set up a link building team to share the load.

Avoid the Dark Arts

If you come across an SEO company that promises you they can get you a number 1 ranking in Google - run away as fast as you can. No one can make promises like that. If they do, the chances are they are utilising black hat techniques that will seriously damage your website.

These are things like cloaking, keyword stuffing, using link farms, invisible text.

Short cuts don't exist in SEO.

Watch the Keywords

The art of SEO copywriting is a complex one. It's not just a case of writing a bit about your company and then cramming as may keywords into it as possible.

If you do that you'll achieve three things:

• Content that's unreadable
• Content that will turn readers off
• Content that won't convert

Only by creating compelling copy that sells will you convert readers. To attract the search engine spiders, you have to understand how they view your website, the importance of the location of your keywords and how they are used. A good SEO copywriter will understand all of this - by the way, if they start talking about keyword density, run. That is a dirty phrase that shouldn't be used. Writing in a natural style wins everytime. If you start counting the frequency of your keywords you'll just create stilted, unnatural copy.

Don't Stop

Even if you avoid all the hurdles and only employ white hat techniques, you must remember that SEO is an ongoing process. It isn't something that you can do once and then forget about.

It's a competitive world out there so if you want to stay one step ahead you have to constantly add fresh content, build links and review your keywords to ensure they are still relevant.

Your hard work will be rewarded with more targeted traffic, greater sales and a reduction in your marketing spend. Now that can't be bad.