.A stronger online presence means you need to optimize your website for search engines to send traffic to your website.  Here are 6 mistakes that are commonly made:

1. Choosing a domain name without any keywords.
'Joeblowmechanical' gives more clues than 'joe blow'.
Sure, if you plan to be famous, use your name. But unless you are Brad Pitt...

2. Too much "Bling"

Yes, it's very nice to have a flashy website, and may impress your readers, if you ever get them! Because search engines crawl for content, CONTENT IS EVERYTHING! You must have enough content on your first loading page for the spider to index. If not, your website will receive a poor ranking.

3. Not Using the ALT tags

You need to use the alternate text button (copy and paste title/description). Particularly if you have an online shop, remember to include some keywords in the ALT tags in the images of your products. It is as easy to copy and paste the description of the product into the Alt tag on your page, thereby giving search engines something to index. (they can't read images)

4. No Keywords or Too Many Keywords

This is the cornerstone to the success of Search Engine Optimization. By over stuffing your content with too many keywords, you may do harm to your ranking if the spiders find out what you have been doing!
A better strategy is to write information that readers and internet users can really appreciate.

5. Content duplication

It might be tempting to take information off your competitors' website, but plagiarizing content will not help your page ranking. Robots know what is original content, so make yours unique!

6. No updates

Once your website is up and running, that's not the end of it. It needs to be updated with new content (like a blog) at least weekly, if possible. Search engines crawl for updates all the time. Your site will get picked up if you keep it current.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Just a few handy hints for the Newbies!