The Top 20 SEO Mistakes of 2008 As another year comes to an end, I have to focus once again on the biggest lost opportunity most companies made with their marketing dollars in 2008. Hundreds of millions are spent on broad awareness campaigns that are not very efficient or measurable. Most companies, even the ones with large marketing budgets, failed to take advantage of the best value in marketing...strategic search engine optimization. Check out our list, and get on this train to grow your brand and your business in 2009! 1- Lack of Unique Title & Meta Tags: Not applying unique title tags, meta description and meta keywords for every webpage of your site. 2- Not using search engine friendly URL`s: Dynamic URLs should be avoided if possible. Having multiple dynamic url strings can have a negative impact on the value of the page in the eyes of search engines. Static URLs with page related keywords are preferred. 3- Use of Javascript Navigation: Linking with javascript within the navigation without having a non-javascript html format of the navigation in the code 4- A deep navigation architecture: Important content pages being placed more than two clicks away from the home page. A flat navigation where the important pages are linked from every page of the site is critical. 5- Creating a website entirely in flash. While there are techniques that will help the search engines read Flash, most companies don`t employ them. High design is important, but recognize the impact your design is having on page rank and consider the alternatives. 6- Using solely an image navigation. There are alternate CSS based solutions to creating an image navigation. A text link is believed to have a stronger algorithm value than an image alt-tagged link. 7- Linking to Competitors: Promoting competing company or information sites by giving them one way links does more harm than good in terms of both search engine algorithm and traffic loss through the links directing your site`s visitors to other sites. 8- Website Functionality Problems: Check for broken links, invalid sitemaps, invalid image locations, etc. 9- Lack of 301 redirects: Changing URLs of webpages without implementing proper 301 permanent redirect commands pointing from the old URL to the new URL. 10- Creating content only for the search engines: While there are certain search engine guidelines that need to be obeyed; usability should be a more important factor than just writing for search engines. A good user experience is what delivers results. "Keyword Stuffing" for the sake of search engine rankings should be avoided at all costs. 11- Linking to "bad neighborhoods": Search engines decide the intentions of a site more likely through outbound links rather than inbound links. Webmasters have to be aware of sites that use bad SEO practices and not link to "untrusted" sites. 12- Lack of Proper Keyword Research: Targeting underperforming (wrong) keywords can cost you time, money, opportunity & most importantly wasted links. A solid and comprehensive keyword research strategy is a must before jumping into an SEO campaign. 13- Shooting for the moon: Setting up realistic expectations is an important part of an SEO campaign. If you are selling "personal digital printers" only; you do not necessarily need to target the short tail "printer" keyword which is harder to rank for and probably has a lower conversion rate and a higher bounce rate. 14- Magic Dust Theory: Before starting an SEO campaign, the company`s management has to be prepared for thr long haul. SEO is not magic fairy dust and it will not result in page one rankings overnight (if ever). Proper expectations need to be established, as well as strategy, investment and goals. 15- Lack of domain alignment: Site owners have to align all different domains and subdomains that point to the website to be redirected to one central domain name. 16- Miscoded robots.txt: Robots.