What is not so simple is achieving the goal, and recognizing this, James Schramko has put together some neat packages to help you get there.

His team will set up your program from scratch, and depending on the package you choose, all of the tough stuff will be done for you. The linking strategies that are used include video, press releases, articles, bookmarks, blogs and social sites – the list continues to grow as opportunities are realized.

There are two packs available:

• Domination Pack
• PRO Pack

Find out more about how you can have SEO websites.

For somebody who hasn’t a clue what SEO means and isn’t particularly tech savvy, it might be a great option.  Otherwise, consider this list before hiring a search engine optimization consultant:

Market Size

This is all about competition.  How many other sites are in your market, and of those, how many are still active and producing new content and aren’t just relics that haven’t been shut down yet?  If your market is highly specific, then just make sure to include those highly market-specific terms and keywords in your web page titles, your content, and in image descriptions.  However, the bigger the market, the more competition.  And that might make hiring an SEO consultant a more worthwhile proposition.

Market Specificity

While similar to market size, market specificity relates to the focus of your market.  For example, a broad market would be “books,” whereas a specific market would be “leather-bound first edition books.”  These specific markets can still be highly competitive, but the specific nature of what customers are looking for can prove as a guidebook to your SEO and keyword efforts.

Fly Solo First

If you have a decent understanding about how search engines and Web 2.0 sites work, then you can probably do some rudimentary SEO work yourself without too much trouble.  By performing this work yourself, you not only save money, but you will also learn more about the process which can help you in the future, and can help you in relaying to an SEO consultant (should you ever hire one) exactly what you want.

Time Vs Money

If you can spend the time normally required for SEO working on another facet of your business and make more than you would pay for a consultant, then the smart move is to hire a consultant.  While beginners may not have much money on hand at the beginning of their careers, using some of those precious funds on an SEO consultant may be the right move for you.

>> Take the pain and stress out of achieving great SEO by using an SEO Partner

The thing is, though, most of the people who buy these programs aren’t anywhere near the level they could attain with just three simple tenets of SEO that every webmaster should follow:

Simple Site Architecture

Search engines use small pieces of software called “spiders” to “crawl” your website and catalog the different pages and content it contains.  Keep you site architecture and navigation as simple as possible.  No buried subpages, no ridiculously specific Category headings on blogs.  If you can’t reach any page in your site within three or four clicks, then it’s too complicated (excluding scrolling through blog archives, of course, which will require more clicks as you make more entries).  This philosophy also applies to how your URLs look.  Keep them simple and direct.  And last but not least, build an XML sitemap (there are a lot of free tools that do this automatically, especially for blogs) and submit it to a search engine.

Build Links

This is a tough one for the novice webmaster, but the fact remains that if you want to get higher search rankings, one of the best ways to do that is to get high-profile sites to link to you.  Don’t succumb to the lure of link farms and pay-for-link scams; one genuine link from a well-established site is worth a thousand of them.  Try to build relationships with the people who run popular sites in your market (commenting on their blogs is a great way to introduce yourself), and the links will come eventually.

Good Content

This one is pretty simple:  write content that people want to read, don’t write for search engines.  If you stuff a bunch of keywords into your content, viewers will notice and be more likely to click away.  You may go up a rank or two in search results, but what’s the point when no visitor stays on your site for more than 15 seconds?  That said, do make sure that your keywords are included in the titles and headers of your web pages, and also in the tags of blog entries.

>> When you really want to ramp up your SEO however, get the professional services of an SEO Partner - a great service designed by James Schramko