By Michael Davies

To be perfectly frank, without SEO, you will not create the essential building blocks to enable the search engines to find and check out your site and the number of potential clients or customers who will never find your site, could be catastrophic for your online business.

If the search engines cannot find and index your site, your traffic will be insignificant, probably limited to a small number of your friends and family and their personal contacts. If your website is selling a product or service, that really would be an absolute disaster.

What SEO does is to enable you to lift the chances of your website being indexed by the search engines. But when done really effectively it also gives you a chance of having your URL on Google’s first page, when a potential visitor enters one of your keywords into their search box. Obviously, your site needs to be as high as possible to the first page of Google, Yahoo, MSN or Dogpile results page.

When first beginning to consider SEO for your website, you have to consider the two separate, but essential elements of the optimization process.

- Onpage optimization
- Offpage optimization (this is rated as slightly more important by the major search engines)

Onpage covers the following:

* A well constructed sitemap (this really helps in getting a good ranking)

* Your page title which must reflect the page content - three titles separated by a ‘|’ are a good idea

* Anchor texts not only in your first headline, but throughout your pages

* Your keywords, which are vital and should also be reflected in your page title

* Well thought out ‘h1′ and ‘h2′ html tags, again probably closely reflecting your keywords

* Outbound links to high ranking sites (this is gaining strongly in importance, especially with Google, who are also beginning to value one-way links far more than reciprocal links - because of recent growth of automatic reciprocal link builders)

* Videos (most of the major search engines value relevant video imaging and audio links quite highly)

* images ie alternative descriptions of images

Offpage covers these facets:

* The number of website pages which link to your site (on a one way basis, ie not requiring a reciprocal link - see above)

* The Google page rank (PR) of the website linking to you

* The page title of the website linking to your site

* The anchor text used in the link to your site

* The number and type of links on the website linking to yours (so-called authority sites are especially important, if you can get them - eg those with .edu / .ac / or .gov in their domain name

* Which websites link to yours (those with a high Google page ranking are the most desirable)

* The number of outbound links on the website linking to yours (if they already have a high Google PR, the fact of this will reflect very well on the website at the outbound links)

* The total number of links on the website linking to yours

* Whether or not Google regards the websites linking to yours as being “authority sites” eg those with a .gov or .edu extension.

Obviously you can see that links are extremely important. This will involve you trying to contact the owners of the highest ranking websites, with the aim of persuading them to have a backlink, a link on their site, back to yours. You can actually influence the success of this, by ensuring that you already get plenty of backlinks from other sources. There is no doubt that the higher Google PR are the best places to get links if you can, but try to get as many links as possible from other sites, before you even approach them.

If you were wondering how on earth are you supposed to do this, it is actually surprisingly easy. It is all about writing (relevant) articles and then submitting them to as many article directories as you can. Again, start by sending to the most popular, like EzineArticles, but at least try to find 20 or 30 article directories with a Google PR of 5 or 6 (or better) and submit to these sites. There is some good article submitting software available, and I’m sure you can find it with a simple Google search. Beware though not to fall foul of some directories who ban articles submitted automatically by the software.

At the end of each article is an author’s resource box, where you can promote yourself. This is where the article publishers allow you to quote the URL of your website and your email address, and these URL quotes will be the backlinks to your site for which the search engines will be looking. You should note, by the way, that most article publishers disallow any self-promotion in the body of your article, so make very good use of the Resource Box, it is the only chance you have got.

By David Clarke

By following this checklist you can make sure your business gets the online exposure it deserves.

1. Create a master plan for your site and your business - Your plan should include how the site will be run and what business goals you hope to achieve. When doing this, think in detail about how you intend to make your website stand out from the crowd and grab the attention of web users.

2. Find your target audience - One of the most crucial elements to optimisation is identifying your target audiences. It is important to know who your readership will be, how you will grab their attention and how you can keep them coming back for more.

3. Create a marketing plan - Publicity is an essential part to any business. Make sure you get the word out about your new ventures. This should include writing press releases for circulation amongst your established media connections, sending press releases to new media sources such as webzines and writing articles about your products and services. When writing an article, remember to include keywords which take people back to your website. You should also include your contact information and encourage questions to give readers the opportunity to respond.

4. Create a blog for your business - Blogs are a great way of making sure your website keywords are pulled up by search engines, keeping you at the top of their organic listings. When you have a blog, try to start relevant conversations, add posts and give links to useful data to keep your readers coming back for more. If the topic you discuss is important to people they will contact you about it, adding keywords to your site. You should also go on other blog pages and write about progressions in your business and the services you offer.

5. Build a mailing list - Allow readers of your blog to give their contact details and become members of your mailing list. Remember to respond to readers requests via email and let them know you care about them as a customer. This should increase your readership and give you more opportunities to sell your business.

6. Use incentives - Draw your customers in with your latest promotions and online campaigns. You can do this by offering free gifts, online discounts or by giving increased access to your site. People often search the web for free offers and by having some available you can generate more traffic for your site.

7. Work with a reputable company - Make sure the advertising company you use has good customer service and communication. Ask to see a portfolio of their successes and judge whether they are suited to optimising your business.