Here's a news story with a warning for entrepreneurs tempted to hire a Search Optimisation Company - BMW's German website has been banned from Google for trying to trick the search engine. (story here: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-02-04-n60.html)

While many SEO consultants do know what they are doing, a worryingly large number use tricks to try to get sites to the top of Google (and other search engines).

This can work well for a short time - but Google doesn't like these tricks, and is always on the lookout for sites that use them.

Tricks that can get you into trouble include:
+ Using text that is the same colour as the background to hide keywords on the page.
+ Creating copies of the site that point to each other.
+ Loading up your web pages with too many keywords.
+ Delivering different content to search engines to that seen by normal users.
+ Automatically 'spamming' blogs, forums and other sites with links back to your site.

The best ways to get Google to love your website and put you higher up the rankings are:
+ Have lots of highly relevant content, and update/add to it regularly. Nothing beats this.
+ Avoid inaccessible whizzy geek-pleasing toys such as Flash animations. Keep it simple with text and images.
+ Use ALT tags on images to describe them.
+ Link to lots of very useful websites.
+ Get other RELEVANT websites to link to you.

Google rewards you for giving a useful and easy-to-use website to your users - that is what puts you higher up the ranking. Don't try to outwit them with trickery - or your website will go the same way as BMW's German website.

Useful information on optimising your website for search engines can be found here:
http://www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optim...