a) Assuming That All Businesses And Industries Are The Same
There is a common belief that if somebody succeeds in the SEO of a certain business in a certain specific industry, they will automatically succeed in any industry and any business.

This has to be the most common reason for failure. Especially where the webmaster hires some affordable SEO expert that has had success in some other niche industry.

The truth is that one business is often very different from another and quite often the effort required to get a certain web site at the top of search engine rankings is very different from the effort required to get another different site to the same level. Different categories have different levels of competition. There are certain categories where the competition is so stiff and the number of competing web sites so numerous that it is virtually impossible to carry out any successful SEO campaign without adjusting the focus and niche target market of that particular enterprise.

The temptation is just too big to hand over your web site to some 'SEO expert' and expect them to work some SEO magic with no input from you. You should resist that temptation because the chances of such an arrangement working are really so slim that the odds are heavily stacked against you succeeding.

b) A Failure To Decide What Particular Niche To Focus On
Many webmasters tend to forget that they are competing in the world market and that the only way they can ever hope to be successful is by carefully selecting some narrow niche that the others have ignored but which they are very well suited to covering.

There is no way that you can be all things to all people, and especially not in a fiercely competitive world market. This correct focus on a narrow niche is what will quite often make or break an SEO effort. If you opt to hire some expert, they will usually be anxious to get your business and will hardly spend any time studying your industry prior to your committing yourself to their services. And by the time you commit there is no turning back, whatever the difficulties that they encounter.

You do not expect some SEO expert to learn all the knowledge you have accumulated over many years involvement in a certain industry in just a few days. And that is precisely where the problem starts. There is no way that a successful SEO campaign can be executed without adequate information.

A webmaster who carries out their own SEO campaign is also doomed to failure if they have not decided on what niche to focus their efforts on.

c) A Failure To Closely And Constantly Monitor Keyword Popularity
There is no way of avoiding the appropriate keyword phrases for your site in any successful SEO campaign. The big mistake many webmasters or blog owners make is to do their keyword research once and then forget all about it. Keyword phrases are changing in popularity all the time with some reducing in polarity while others increase in leaps and bounds. There is no way you can possibly stay informed without constantly and regularly monitoring keyword popularity.

Even more important you will not be able to come across the new keyword phrase opportunities that emerge all the time.

If you decide to hire some SEO expert, they will start from a position of weakness if they are not aware of what has transpired over the last few months and even years concerning popular keyword phrases. How will they be able to accurately judge on the best direction to take in their campaign?

Conclusion
You will have realized that SEO campaigns are very intimate affairs that require lots of information and research over a long period of time to be highly successful. And even if you are bringing some expert onboard to carry out your SEO campaign for you, it is absolutely important that they have enough information to start with. Both from their previous experiences that you should know about and analyze and ask questions about before you reveal anything about the subject matter of your web site. You too should be gathering as much information as possible, all the time.

Article by David Callan. David is an Internet Marketing and search engine optimisation consultant. Visit his websites SEO tools section for free search engine tools such as Anchor text checker and Pagerank search.