I finished a course in search engine marketing from Web CEO University today. It was a great course; you can see my certification certificate here.
I figured I would share some of the core things you should keep in mind for your website in terms of search engine optimization:
Analyze related keyword traffic, use a tool such as the one at inventory.overture.com to see what individuals are searching for, then search that keyword to see how popular the top 10 results are. Find 1-3 keywords that are highly relevant, have a decent amount of daily traffic, and the competition is not all incredibly big sites.
You then want to optimize your main page for these 1-3 keywords. The key is to not be a spammer and just stuff the site with keywords, do it in an authentic way that brings value. Have the keyword(s) in the beginning of your title, in your meta tags, in your content, your site links, and at the bottom of the site.
Then try to build authentic links pointed towards your page from other websites (the more popular they are, the better). If you have to do reciprocal links try to put the reciprocal link on another page so it is not viewed negatively by the search engines. You want the link to have a keyword in it, as well as have some anchor text related to your keyword. Ideally, you want one way links pointed to your site on related sites that are popular.
Start with this simple strategy, work hard, deliver worthwhile and fresh content, and you are well on your way…who needs an SEO consultant 
In all seriousness, SEO is a mix of art & science, I thought I knew a great deal before the course but now I have a much greater understanding and now understand the value a professional search engine marketer can provide.
Read some related articles:
- Unique Impressions or Mind Impressions ? So the million dollar question for all blog network owners must be: “what type of traffic are you getting?” I won’t lie and say that...
awesomeness! So is the course free and how long did it take you to do it? haha
The course was $300 and comes with the professional version of the WebCEO software.
You can download a free version of WebCEO software and it offers a free basic course (I think).
It took probably around 2-3 weeks to finish the course, doing about 2-4 chapters a day.
Wow, congrats on successfully passing the course. SEO is entremely important for the budding entrepreneur (heck, any entrepreneur that has a web presence. I’m always trying to tinker with SEO from time to time and it’s def. a long process of trial and error. Keep up the great work, dude! Hey, so when are you going to start a SEO blog?!?
I agree with your assessment of SEO.
In my opinion to make any site successful it is best to simply follow the basics i.e.
1. Create good quality content.
2. Ensure that your sites are standards compliant (to make the search engine spiders life easier.
3. Optimise your pages for your chosen keywords.
4. Throw in a bit of healthy link building.
You can probably try and generate trafic by other cleverer means, but the engines tend to clamp down on dubious methods and then you are left with nothing.
Exactly!
Basically the SEO course just strenghthened my ability to research good keywords, how to optimize pages, what techniques to avoid, various techniques on how to go about link building, how to track results in the SERP (search engine results page), etc.
P.S. Get listed in DMOZ.org and Yahoo! Directory…very important for SEO
Yes, DMOZ is a must.
Its amazing how many directories on the internet scrape their content from there.
Hey there nice to see you taking an SEO course,
I think the most important things to do for SEO is to keep up with the news! Most people, and specifically young entrepreneurs learn the basics of SEO and then never look back to keep updated.
There is an enormous, well connected and respected SEO network. There are a few top forums for SEO and a few blogs as well. I’ll be creating an informative list at my blog soon, but the best sites are:
mattcutts.com/blog/ (blog)
SEObook.com (blog)
SEOMoz.org (blog)
forums.digitalpoint.com/ (forum)
http://www.v7n.com/forums/ (forum)
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/ (forum)
I had some thoughts on a similar SEO / Search Engine Optimization related topic, maybe i’ll start a new thread