This is probably the most unspoken question amongst potential SEO clients - search engine optimization can be expensive. Sure, the payoff is great, but if you don't have the money to begin with, you simply can't afford it. So what to do? Optimizing your own web site can seem like a daunting task, but is it really all that hard?

The answer is no. As long as you have some time, basic html skills, a little creativity and patience. Assuming you already have a good domain name, decent hosting, and a web site designed, here's how I would approach it.

First, make sure the very first page everyone sees is search-engine friendly. Make sure your primary keyword phrase appears first in your title, and can be found throughout text on the first page and throughout the site. Make sure there is text on your first page and not just an entrance page or flash movie. Those types of intros and entrance pages look blank to search engines. You want yours to look relevant for your keyword or key phrase. Include few paragraphs about what the site is selling or offering. As well, be sure to include your geographic area if your service or product is geographically specific. Make sure that when people who don't know anything about your industry or product hit that first page, that they have no doubt as to what the web site's purpose is within seconds. If visitors have that experience, chances are, so will search engine robots.

Second, make sure the rest of your site matches the same search engine friendliness as your first page. Make sure there is a decent amount of textual information on each page, text that includes your keywords and key phrases. Your web site will never rank well on the search engines for any keyword or key phrase that can't be found on the site itself. You also need to clean up your code. Try to use CSS styles when designing the site, and include the styles in a separate style sheet as opposed to the page's header. Move all scripts in the header into an include file. You also want all of your inter-site links to use the full URL rather than just the file name or directory. These can sometimes count as incoming links.

The next thing you want to do is keep the whole site dynamic. There are a number of ways to do this. You can syndicate a frequently updated RSS feed on your site to keep the content fresh. You may want to have your own blog on-site and post to it frequently. You may accept submissions of content from web site visitors. There are many ways to keep your content fresh and growing. This shows the search engine that the site is not something that is out of date.

The final, and most important thing to do to make sure your site is well optimized, is launch an aggressive link development campaign. This isn't quite as simple as it used to be, just merely trading links with relevant sites is not going to do the trick. What you want to do is focus on one-way incoming links. There are plenty of ways to do this. You can offer something in return for a link to your site that is not a link from your site - perhaps a discount on services or products, a mention in your newsletter or custom-written content for their site. Be creative, you'd be surprised what people will give you a link for.

Another way to get one-way incoming links is article submission. Write articles, like I am right now, and submit them to good article distribution places. Find out which online periodicals are in your industry and submit your articles to them in hopes of publication. Be sure to include a link back to your site in your author bio. The links from the article distribution sites are not very valuable themselves, but if, from those site, good relevant web sites pick up your article, they must link back to you and those are the links that will fare well for your web site.

You can also ask your friends, colleagues, business contacts, and anyone else you can think of who have web sites, to link to yours.

If you follow all of these, and don't give up, you can see results anywhere from right away to 6 months from now. Be patient, nothing worthwhile is ever instantaneous, and hard work always pays off. Keep at it and you'll be in the top ten and getting more traffic than you ever have before.

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SEO is an area of great conjecture, theory and pontification by so–called experts. Most have never worked in the fields of Marketing or Advertising. SEO is the process which makes your website visible to robots. The more a robot understands your website, the better your ranking will be across search engines. Organic SEO is ethical optimization without the help of any paid placement program. As an SEO expert, I always prefer to optimize websites using this method.

One can hold this SEO position quite confidently because SEO is not going away. Or, SEO practitioners can expand their boundaries to become more general online marketers - and call themselves just that. I absolutely agree, but SEO is also about making sure the site can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines. From a search engine perspective, the best site in the world is unlikely to rank if the bot can’t extract any content from it. Themed sites - One of the growing theories of SEO is that you are more likely to rank well if you have a substantial amount of pages on a similar theme. Build a blog with over 200 pages of content on the same theme and you’ll increase your chances of ranking well as search engines will see you as an authority on the topic.

The competitive aspects of SEO come from the fact that SEO is always changing, and SEO practitioners need to adapt and keep up to remain competitive in the SERPs. There is a TON of free SEO information on the web. SEO is a lot like life. You learn a lot as you go along and make a few mistakes along the way.

However recently I’ve been redeveloping my own website and so all of the SEO issues started to spring to mind - will it spider, won’t it spider, will clients find me etc etc. SEO is not a one time issue. Its main purpose is not only to put your website in the top results (for the searches relevant to your content), but to keep this for long time.

Good SEO is having your content readable, expert SEO is using title tags, keyword-rich content and such. It’s important in any type of marketing to engage new target audiences, and especially over the web, SEO is a great method to do just that.

The elephant in the room with SEO is paid links. You may have a wonderful validating, user friendly page, but if your competition has 1000 backlink lead on you, you'll never see the top SERP spot for big keywords. While SEO is almost always a good idea, if you're counting on it to save a failing business, you may want to rethink things. Since Google is now by far the most popular search engine, a seo issue for Google is worth mentioning. Google finds the most relevant sites for the key words exactly as they were typed.

SEO is not about hoping that the search engines will get it right - it’s about helping them get it right. In the short run, unless these SEO issues are addressed, message boards will lack the power to set high in the competitive search areas. SEO is a very powerful tool for Internet marketing and, when harnessed correctly, you can see website traffic and conversions multiply providing excellent return on investment.

While the copy and content you choose is critical to SEO success, it's important that you also consider your website visitors and why they are visiting your website. Your SEO copy writing should focus on two key factors: 1) Proper structure for SEO purposes and 2) Effective positioning and selling of your goods and services. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities the internet holds. Whether your site provides content, services, products, or information, search engines are a primary method of navigation for almost all Internet users. The more creative you write, the more chance you have got for someone to link to your website.

Selecting right effective keyword for search engine optimization and web site promotion is key. Automatic generate, suggestion and analyze the most top popular keywords and keyword phrases related to your business. Are their any other ways besides searches to find potential clients for your business? Any databases online to find specific client companies? There is no question that for any successful online business, a significant presence and high rankings in search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo is a necessary. However, to attain high or top rankings in popular search engines is not an easy task, especially for competitive keywords.

Article Written By J. Foley

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