The main goal behind SEO is to manipulate a search engine. In his lectures, Richard Vanderhurst reminds his students that they should try to convince the crawlers that they deserve that top search engine ranking above anyone else. But manipulation can only go so far before it becomes maltreatment. If you are overdoing it with your SEO work, you could be black-listed and banned from a search engine.

This is a list suggested by Richard Vanderhurst of the many things you may and may not do in the manipulation process:
1. Utilize elements such as content, tags, graphics, and keywords to fully enhance your site.
2.Employ multiple keywords where they fit and are effective. Don’t overdo it.
3.Incorporate shared links from live and relevant sites.
4.Promote traffic flow to your site through means of marketing efforts, shared linking and keyword advertising.
5.Avoid waiting for search engines to notice you and manually submit your site to search engine databases instead.

You should not:
1.Hide keywords throughout your site to try and trick search engines. This will get you banned in no time.
2.Create synthetic links from your site to unrelated sites to augment the link analysis of crawlers. Search engines can distinguish between good links and bad links.
3.Produce fake traffic flow to your website in an attempt to appear more popular then you are. In most cases, search engines will be able to tell what you’re doing, and again you’ll be banned.
4.Attempt to shove your website into a search engines database by continuously submitting it. Richard Vanderhurst suggests that once every six weeks is a good, steady pace for submission, if you do indeed need to submit it more than one time. By repeatedly submitting it, you are bound to end up with a highly displeasing result: banishment.
5.Assume the search engines will give you a high ranking in your area, subject, or keyword the moment it is taken in. Building your site up takes time and in SEO you should work through multiple failed attempts before you have a high rank. Search engine optimization is an ongoing practice; don’t expect that you’ll be able to walk into a first page position.

These are only a few of the central rules you should work by when manipulating search engines and optimizing your site.