It is not enough to simply add Meta tags and do search engine submission of your site to a million search engine indexes and directories. The first placement tip in obtaining significant Web traffic counts is to seek first-page search engine results. An early step is to build a great content-rich site. One of the last steps is the proper submission of your great site to the search engines or directories. In the middle is a step that is VITAL if you want to obtain front-page results. Most site owners bypass this step because they forget about it or think it is too complex, but without competent search engine optimization Web site services you are destined to become search engine fodder. The following FREE tools and advice describe how to choose your keywords with search engine optimization and ranking in mind.

What is Search Engine Optimization? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the science of increasing traffic to your Web site by improving the internal and external factors influencing ranking in search results. It is a major part of Internet marketing. It is mostly technical in nature. It includes Web programming expertise combined with business, persuasion, sales and a love for competitive puzzle solving. If you do all this right, you will have a Web site capable of maintaining desired revenue goals while achieving high rankings in the organic sections of search engine results pages. Creating a Web site does not just involve technical skills, or copywriting, or links, or Engagement Objects™, or search engine submission; it involves an intricate blend of more than 200 variables woven into the fabric of a Web site. It is difficult to accomplish this type of project without a formal, proven methodology and strong proprietary tools. We offer you a tutorial on all of that and more on these pages.

Before you start, you should understand that being among the top 10 rankings in every major search engine and directory can sometimes be achieved, although very few sites can get there, and the effort is often beyond reason. Note: URL ranking results change week-to-week due to competition, so maintaining a top organic SEO ranking requires constant keyword monitoring and information rework. Search engine optimization never rests, much like your competition.

"It is not the job of search engine optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the Web site so that it becomes an eagle."

The key information on this page includes how to prepare both you and your site for a search engine marketing campaign. How to choose the right keywords, how to analyze your competition, what site submission is and how it is best accomplished, when to monitor your search engine ranking, instructions for performing an analysis of your site results and traffic and conversion, complete with search engine optimization tools and aids. This site covers all basic and advanced strategies and the common mistakes to avoid.

Please start with a review of our SEO Code of Ethics and SEO Standards pages before you edit your site pages.

We think it is important that you learn how the search engines and directories relate to each other. View our Search Engine Relationship Chart®. This is a flash rendering of our famous FREE PDF that is suitable for color printing, and all the links are active! The Search Engine Relationship Chart® has evolved quite a bit over the years; check out the Search Engine History - Chart Histogram to see how much it has changed.

Flatiron®, Inc. was singled out as the Best Professional Services Interactive Application award winner for 2004 by the IAC Web Marketing Association for this Search Engine Relationship Chart.

There's a hierarchy to be considered when developing any SEO campaign. To help businesses and marketers apply this strategy of prioritization, the SEO Hierarchy of Needs shows the relative place of search engine optimization tasks.

View the SEO Hierarchy of Needs in interactive flash, or download the chart in PDF.

The most important first search engine optimization tip is to select keywords wisely. There are a few items you will need to go through in order to properly select keywords. Please use these in sequence, and when you are done you will have completed an SEO checklist and have seen our plan of attack in action.

Initially, you must brainstorm for keywords. Most people can make a short (or long) list of keywords they would want to use to find their own site. Use these to "prime the keyword pump." These will be used in the next few steps.

To select keywords that you expect Web surfers to use to locate your site, submit your obvious keyword terms using our research tools below to locate the top-ranked competing sites. You should be able to validate that your competitors for these search engine optimization rankings appear. The next tip is to create a list of the top site URLs that return from each search. Our search engine optimization tools present a list of sites with the most top-25 rankings. The numbers represent their current (real-time) ranking position (1 is first, 3 is third, etc.). These sites are used to identify sites needing analysis in subsequent steps. Enter your major keywords (ours are "search engine optimization" and "search engine ranking"). You will find that in a Web-sized audience of billions of Web pages, your competition will generally rank well in several search engines. True high rankings are achieved by having a first-page ranking in most of these search engines for many keywords (not just one or two).