As you try to craft your website into an online destination that is valuable to web users and ensure that it will get noticed in the search engine results, you're sure to get a myriad of different opinions about how best you should approach it. Some of the tips you receive on search engine optimisation (SEO) will be useful, some debatable, while some may turn out to be absolute bunk.

In many cases, the safest approach is to seek wisdom straight from the horse's mouth.

As it is the leading search engine in the world, when you optimise your site you are inevitably doing it, at least to some extent, for Google. So when Google hands out advice on what makes good SEO, it's probably a good idea to listen.

In a recent video post on Google's official Webmaster Central Blog, the search engine's Developer Programs Tech Lead, Maile Ohye, sheds some light on some common mistakes that webmasters make in their SEO attempts.

Standing out from the crowd

The first, and arguably the most serious, mistake that she points out is not having a 'value proposition', that is, a key feature of your site or your business that distinguishes you from the competition and provides extra value to customers. This would seem to be a common sense point but as the saying goes, there's nothing common about common sense. There's little point in climbing to the top of the search engine results pages, only to find you have nothing to say. And as Ohye points out, starting out with a value proposition in mind can help to clarify the direction you should take with your SEO.

Natural SEO

She also emphasises a more natural and fluid approach to SEO, something which has been becoming more and more important for websites to do in the past couple of years. For example, she encourages webmasters to: "...avoid implementing a hack rather than researching new features or best practices that could simplify development". Ohye also advises against getting, "caught in SEO trends," and says that webmasters should spend, "less time obsessing about the latest 'trick' to boost your rankings and instead focus on the fundamental tasks/ efforts that will bring lasting visitors."

The video is well worth a watch in full, as it not only offers some good advice, but provides a glimpse into the overall mindset and philosophies of Google, courtesy of someone within the 'inner sanctum'.

Jonathan Celeste invites you to join the rest of his clients at the top of the Google mountain with a Search Engine Optimisation campaign from Onit solutions. http://www.onitsolutions.co.uk

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