DIY SEO

In many ways, search engine optimisation is like plumbing. Sure anyone can do it, it's not rocket science, but to do a good job, you need four things:

1. The Knowlegde
   You need to know a bit about the subject. You can easily find out everything you need to know online. If you don't have the time (or the interest) to find out everything you need to know, then you can always call on the expertise of a tradesman. This is often an expensive route, but there is the danger that if you do a job wrong, it could cost you more to hire an expert to fix a botched job - badly done SEO can do more harm than good if you end up getting penalised by google for using nefarious SEO techniques.
   
   With search engine optimisation, you need to keep updated with new developments and changes in the rules about what constitutes good practice and bad practice (also referred to as 'white hat' seo and 'black hat' seo - a phrase derived from the old cowboy films where the goodies always wore white hats and the baddies always wore black hats). For example, paying for links on someone else's website was seen as a good business model in the early days of SEO, and a lot of people made a lot of money out of it.
   
   These days, you can get penalised by google for paying for links. Where this puts services like Yahoo directory which is a paid-for link directory I dont know, but there is good evidence to suggest that inclusion in the Yahoo directory actually increased your site's trust rank in Google (very few spammers would fork out hundreds of pounds to Yahoo just to get one low converting link) so actually helps with SEO rather than hinders it.
   
   To arm yourself with the right knowlege, you need to first know the basics of SEO - the articles that I have found useful for a general background in SEO are here:
   
   SEO introduction
   
   Up to date SEO news
   
   Glossary of SEO terms
   
   Note: no one outside Google know exactly what factors and what weighting each factor of a webpage determines page rank, and opinions on certain things differ - like whether div layers or tables get better rankings, or whether using noscript tags penalise your page, so it is a good idea to read these articles with the view that they represent evidence based theories rather than actual facts.
    
   
2. The Tools
   In order to maximise your time, you need to make sure you are using the right tools. You wouldn't use a sink plunger to fit a tap now would you? Similarly, with search engine optimisation, you need to use the right tool for the job. A list of the tools that I have found helpful are:
   
   
   Online Tools
   
   Alexa tool bar related site suggestion tool
   
   Free online web submission
   
   Future page rank checker
   
   Keyword position tool
   
   Directory Submission online tool  - fantastic tool for quickly doing manual directory and manual search engine submissions
   
   Link popularity checker
   
   Keyword research tool
   
   Massive search engine list  - huge list of search engines, slightly outdated now, but good list of search engines and directories to submit your website to
   
   W3C Validator  - check whether there are any errors in your website's code
   
   
   Software
   
   WebCEO - free online SEO software - simply the best value for money SEO software you can buy, and is better than many paid for SEO software out there
   
   SEO Elite - this one is number 1 in google for 'SEO Software' so it must be good - costs $167, but if you sign up then wait for all the marketing emails from Brad Callen you can usually get a discount if you wait a couple of weeks.
   
   
   Sitemaps
   
   Sitemaps are just lists of the pages in your website. Generally this means having a web page someone on your site with lots of links on it, but search engines can also use sitemaps to get a list of all the pages on your website (even dynamically generated URLs) and use these to tell their spiders which pages to crawl. For search engines to use sitemaps, you have to create a special XML file. http://sitemaps.org/  tells you how to create simple xml sitemaps of your site, and there are also scripts on the web that can automatically generate your sitemap for you (asp, php and .net sitemap generator scripts will be appearing on this website soon).
   
   Links for sitemap related resources are here:
   
   http://sitemaps.org/  - the standard and description of the sitemap protocol
   
   http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/  - online tool to create sitemap for simple websites
   
   Google webmaster tools - submit your xml sitemaps to google here
   
   Yahoo site explorer - submit your xml sitemaps to yahoo site explorer
   
   Live.com webmaster tools - submit your xml sitemaps to live.com
   
   Note: you should also reference your sitemap in the robots.txt file, see the sitemaps.org website for more information on how to do this.
    
   
   
3. The Experience
   The more you do something, the better you get at it. Writing descriptive, keyword rich page titles that are attractive to human activity in search engines is a fine art ( see this page for a good overview of writing page titles ). Vetting partner site quality for link exchanges or finding good free directory sites to submit your url to also gets easier and quicker with practice.
    
   
   
4. The Time
   Lets face it, if you had a spare 4 hours a day to promote your site, research keywords, analyse web traffic and generate updated content for your website, you would probably be on page 1 of google for most of your targeted keywords, but in the real world, businesses do not have time for this, which is why some of the companies employ SEO consultants or search engine optimisation companies to do this job for them.
   
   Larger companies often have experts in-house to perform this function. All too often though, the role of SEO in larger companies is attached as a secondary roll to a technical team or web designers. Sometimes this is a good idea since SEO for a single small scale website is not generally a full time job.
    

Should you DIY SEO?

The answer to this question depends on whether you have the time to do it, how much your time is worth, whether you need it, and whether you think someone else would do a better job of it. In the end, SEO is like having a plumber living in your house - useful for the times when you need work doing, but most of the time, you can tick along nicely without them.

The best advice is: if you can do it, do it, if you can't then don't (sounds obvious doesn't it). Dont believe everything an SEO company tells you, do your own research, make your own judgements and be patient. SEO takes months or even years to get high up in google for the most competative keywords and if you are paying a high monthly fee for SEO then it might be better to consider doing some of the work yourself or employing a junior admin assistant to perform the more mundane daily tasks like link exchange amin, or writing keyword rich content, and using the SEO company for the more technical aspects of the job like sitemap generation or google product feeds.

For a more thorough resource on DIY SEO go to http://www.freediyseo.co.uk/