These days, internet marketing is bigger than ever as more people attempt to optimize their conversion rates through clever online advertising campaigns. And as many people know, utilizing high quality, proven search engine optimization skills is one of the best ways to improve visibility and conversion.

However, there are a lot of SEO misconceptions that preclude people from really developing the type of online presence and power necessary to improve their bottom line. From keyword blunders to link building mistakes, these mistakes can cost you customers and dollars. To ensure that you don’t let mistakes with SEO preclude your company from becoming an eCommerce success, consider these top 10 mistakes that people tend to make:

Jamming keywords into content is likely one of the biggest SEO mistakes that people make. Oftentimes, keyword mistakes result from misinformation or misunderstandings regarding how keywords should be used to optimize an individual’s placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Basically, people enter keywords when they do a search for specific information, products, or services.

By doing keyword research to learn which phrases individuals are entering, you can pepper your content with these words and thus get a higher ranking in the SERPs because your content will appear more relevant. Many people take this basic idea and “run with it” by putting tons of keywords in their content.

The problem with this strategy is that the content no longer looks natural and the search engines have now become sophisticated enough to determine whether an individual is jamming keywords in content rather than integrating them naturally. To really have success with your use of keywords, they must be relevant to your topic and read organically in your content.

Besides keyword blunders, failure to develop a local search strategy is probably one of the most detrimental SEO mistakes a business owner or marketing manager can make. As noted by Kissmetrics, local search is important if you own a business in which you can gain customers at the local level. Local search is distinct from the keywords that one would use at a national or global level.

To get started, you can use city-specific key phrases in your meta descriptions and page titles. You should also integrate your local phone number and address onto your web pages. Another great local search strategy is to have yourself listed in local review networks and sites like Google Places, Merchant Circle, Yelp, and FourSquare.

Although many people think of SEO as a tool through which to gain a ton of free traffic, this isn’t the whole picture. While traffic is important, conversion is even more important. In many cases, people spend a ton of time determining which phrases brought the most traffic and then try to use these keywords.

But in many cases, lower-traffic keywords can be more beneficial because they entail a higher level of specificity. Moreover, getting a first page ranking for several lower-traffic keywords can help bring in a lot of sales.

The best way to determine which keywords work is to track them through the use of analytics. There are now a wide range of companies that offer conversion tracking for the search terms that you use.

People optimize for the wrong keywords all the time, and it’s a shame because it precludes them from maximizing their conversion rates. One of the optimization mistakes people make include using global keywords when their products and services are only provided at the local level. Another mistake is using generic key phrases that will attract viewers who aren’t interested in your brand.

Finally, you could be using keywords that will only attract attention from individuals in search of free information rather than members of your target market who would be interested in buying your goods and services.

With all of these keyword errors in mind, remember that it’s most advantageous to get really specific about the terms that you use. While placing primacy on generic word sequences can help generate a lot of traffic, you’ll almost always have more success by using specific phrases that produce more relevant traffic and quicker rankings.

Unfortunately, many business owners still maintain websites in which their website name or company is the title for each page of the site. This is one of the biggest mistakes with SEO that you can make. Each page must have a unique, specific title.

This is the case for many reasons, including the fact that they provide readers with a description of what the page’s content is about. If someone tweets the page to a friend, that friend should be able to quickly scan the page title and gain a general understanding of what will be found in the content.

To get an understanding of how this should play out, consider a company that is called ABC Shoe Company. The homepage title would likely be something along the lines of “ABC Shoe Company-Bringing You The Best Shoe Fashions.” Yet every page should notread “ABC Shoe Company-Bringing You The Best Shoe Fashions.” Rather, there should be specific titles based on the content covered on the page. For example, a page depicting shoes that are currently on sale could have a title such as “Top Notch Shoes For Incredibly Low Prices.”

Thinking that link quantity is more important than link quality is one of the biggest SEO misconceptions out there. In fact, a single link from an immensely popular website can help your SERP ranking more than thousands of mediocre or low quality links.

Getting these types of high quality links is definitely harder than attaining them through measures such as gaining listing in a directory, but they’re more important because they’re a better measure of your website quality. With that idea in mind, make sure that you’re focusing on getting links that are relevant to your industry and that don’t contain a plethora of outgoing links.

Anchor text is immensely important in the world of SEO. If you’re not familiar with the term “anchor text,” know that it references the terms that are used for a hyperlink that leads a viewer to another page. In many cases, people use generic anchor text such as “click here” to describe the new page of content that the viewer will be directed to.

Never do this.

You want to make your anchor text as specific as possible because it will be found in the search engines and subsequently used to rank you in terms of relevancy.

In a world where almost anyone can start a website, it’s important to note that there are a lot of cookie cutter, generic websites out there. If you really want to stand out in the internet realm, you need to bring something different to the table.

Yet many business owners make the mistake of using simple, popular templates that will not garner attention from anyone. Remember that there are many design galleries that will link your pages just because you have an excellent, innovative design. With that idea in mind, don’t make the mistake of settling for “look a like” templates, backgrounds, color schemes, etc.

The phrase “Content is King” is prevalent and powerful in the SEO world. This is the case for numerous reasons, including the fact that content is one of the primary forms of media that your audience examines in order to learn more about your brand.

Some common mistakes people use when creating content is using a lot of “fluff,” which is basically filler words and phrases that are used to increase the word count without providing the reader with any relevant information. “Spun” content is another mistake, and this involves taking a piece of content that was already published, changing a few words, and republishing it. This does not really constitute an original piece of content, and it can be boring to read if the viewer has already seen the original work.