Personally, I do not believe in the shortcuts that some SEO marketers use to sell their services. SEO is constantly changing field and each update changes SEO practices.

Here are 6 things to avoid in SEO while optimizing your site to improve your ranking with search engines, to help potential clients or customers to find you:-

Purchasing mass backlinks:
Have you purchased links in hopes of better rankings? Back-link building is a tedious process, so you might be tempted by an ad that promises to build thousands of them for a nominal price. Unfortunately, many of these services will build wrong kind of back link that could negatively affect your site. Always remember it is not the quantity that builds the traffic, it is the quality of your website.

Expecting to automate the process
Blog commenting is an ideal way to build the backlinks. Unfortunately, there are many automated programs which misuse this popular method. The software usually asks to enter a generic content like “Great post, but then spams blogs all over the internet with it. These fake comments might not get through as blog owners use Akismet to catch these automated blog comments or they spot the spam for themselves. Either way you will not gain backlinks that you think you will, at the same time you will stain your reputation.

Text Hiding
Hidden text is that which is invisible or barely visible to a human eye. It takes the form of text that is written in a font that is the same color as a websites background. The font size will be too small for the human eye or may be hidden in your sites source code. The keyword will be placed all over the web page so that it repeats over and over again. Google pick up unnatural keyword and you will be penalized.

Writing a bundle of crappy off-site articles
Article directory submission is used as a fair way to build back-links. People write bad contented articles and throw away those, as it guarantees a link. Today, the usefulness of the article directory strategy has greatly diminished.

Keyword Stuffing
When you stuff your website with keywords, you are developing a site without strong and relevant content. Some black hat firms will generate target keywords that have nothing to do with your site. This is unethical and does not generate traffic.

Believing in shortcuts
It is hard to believe, but the truth is there are no shortcuts in SEO. There are many illegal practices, but at the end of the day it is all about writing great content and building good relationships. If you dont do that, you are only going to let your website fail.