No, you don't, actually.

Search Engine Optimisation is an important enhancement to your website, and something to consider as you update it. However, website administrators should be careful about letting it become the driving force for your website content, losing the focus from your end users.
 

Install X number of intrusive user behaviour monitoring tools

Many websites use the growing array of decent user behaviour monitoring tools to great affect, but I'd say just as many (if not more) don't.

Google Analytics is our personal favourite tool

for providing some great, relevant and useful data that we've found beneficial to improving our websites. There are some features Google Analytics does not offer that might be handy for us, but we've made the decision our website's speed is more important at this stage.

Common errors in this area include piling up multiple tools at once, and quite simply the fact that many website administrators likely fall into one of two categories:

1. Aren't certain what to do with the data.
2. Have no time to do anything with the data.
    

Before installing any of these tools, consider if you'll actually put aside time to work on website improvements. Are you prepared to rewrite key content? Are you prepared for a redesign?

Before you even approach this stage of the game, there are plenty of other things to do, simplier things. Making sure ALT tags on images are correctly filled in and adjusting your Header Titles can be two of the most beneficial things to help your website. The best part is these are both straight forward, and do not require a great investment of time.

If you approach it the right way, it'll make your website more usable, too!

 

Saturate my content with keywords, weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

The number of times I have visited a website (and our own sites have been guilty of this at times!) where it has clearly been written for a search engine rather than a human being is upsetting at best.

I'd like to put forth that unless you are able to write content for both search engines and human beings, it is best to focus on writing relevant content and designing your website for your true target audience.

We sell the best World Cup merchandise for the World Cup 2010. If you like to celebrate your World Cup team's path to victory in the 2010 World Cup we can help with World Cup team merchandise and products for the World Cup 2010 event. World Cup. Vuvuzela.
 

At the end of the day what is the point of being found by search engines when your website's pages are an SEO induced mess? Not to mention the head-shake-worthy travesty that is keyword stuffing, such as hidden keyword links at the bottom of the page? Come on, you know better.

Let it go, relax, get your website up and happening smartly for your real audience. Guide your users to your relevant content by way of great navigation. The search engines will follow.

Use META Tags! omg show me to those sweet, sweet Meta tags!

This is one most the commonly understood techniques by folk that have a little bit of knowledge on SEO techniques. Meta Tags, mainly the Keywords and Descriptions tags, have been used and abused in the past by so-called SEO Experts and have thus lost a lot of their once-held value.

In today's SEO climate, some say that the Meta tags are useless and don't worry about them, others still have the misconception that they're the golden ticket to search engine ranking goodness.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Utilizing meta tags can be helpful, but think of it as just the same as any other piece of content on your page. Meta tags are not a magic solution, but they do offer the ability to control how web pages are described by some search engines. And who knows what the future might bring.

My advice? Use wisely, and for the purpose that they were originally intended for, but don't place too much faith in their power to drive you to the top.

Our friends in Hannover, Germany have built a mast to show the flag of the team they are supporting in the World Cup - which this past weekend was Australia!

Here's hoping the Australian flag gets raised a few more times in Hannover. Although given this cheating German team who knows how much more... :p just kidding!

Great to see some international Australian World Cup team support. Hopefully given a few more trips around the globe Solutions Outsourced can raise an army of Australian-soccer-team supporters. Sounds like a fair tax claim to me!