For people starting new Internet marketing ventures, discovering the strategies and tactics of SEO can be very exciting. When you first learn about search engine optimization, it’s easy to get caught up and a lot of people end up overdoing it. Of course you want to do what you can to attract spiders and search engine robots to your site, but too much of a good thing can be detrimental. What is known as “over optimization” comes across as trying too hard, and frequently leads to a lower ranking on search engine results, not higher.

Search engines such as Google and Yahoo implement programs that dispatch virtual creatures known as robots or spiders out to the Internet to gather information so that they can categorize and rank the millions of sites on the web. Their findings are then compiled so that they know where your site should appear in search results. Proper headlines, keywords and anchors are integral for identifying the content of your site and attracting the attention of the spiders. However, giving them too much emphasis can backfire, causing the exact opposite result than what you are hoping for.

A common SEO-newbie mistake is creating too many cross-links. If every link on your website sends your visitor to another page on your site, the robots are going to catch on and most likely lower your rankings based on their findings. Another thing to look out for is repetitive phrasing. Using the exact wording in your page title, H1 headline, sub-headlines and anchors can come across as spammy and send a signal to the robots that your site may not be valuable to viewers.

The point is to make efforts at improving your search engine rankings while finding a good balance with keeping your content natural and “humanized”. A site that comes across as standardized or obviously manipulated for optimization will have a negative effect on the spiders and will decrease your chances of being found via a web search.