Iron Monkey Ventures

Good article on personal SEO and how the author Julia Angwin went about it.

My favorite quote:

“And thus, I learned the final lesson of SEO: Patience is required.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123379331364449967.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology
The murky art of search-engine optimization can surface a person’s better side online with the proper techno-aggrandizing.

http://www.linkbuilding.org/guide/tips.asp

Short list of things to do for SEO

Content

1. Provide content, not just links, not just images.
2. Use meta-data to describe your site and content.
3. Check for broken links and correct HTML.
4. Fill in “alt” in your image tags.

Backend

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dashboard - submit/verify your website, create a sitemap

Completing these steps will make sure you get listed on search engines and prepare you for the next steps - marketing and building links.

See Vaughns Google search engine SERP Ranking Factors SEO Checklist for a much more detailed and comprehensive list than what I have here.
Vaughn also lists things to avoid.  Which is just as, if not more, important than things to do.

I’ve been twittering or tweeting or twitting. . . using Twitter for a while now.  It’s a great tool to listen in on conversations and get the pulse of what’s going.

I use it to communicate to my clients and to follow the communications of people I’m interested in.  I see great potential in use Twitter as a marketing tool.  As we get ready to launch Parentville.com, Twitter will be a channel to communicate the launch and happenings.  I follow @pleasedressme as they developed their site and eagerly waited for their launch.  I was informed of new updates to their index.  Great job guys!

Brian Solis has a great primer on what twitter is and related services and tools.

Sign up for your own account and follow me on twitter at @lmai to see what’s going on in my head.

I have talked to many small business and website owners who set up a website and wonder why their site is buried several pages deep on search result pages.  They expect someone to get them listed at the top of natural search results within a week.  That might have been possible a few years ago, but not anymore.

Search engines are smart.  They know when you’re trying to dupe them and they don’t like it.  Google has a habit of penalizing websites that break their rules.  They are aware of the link building sites and services.

You business was probably not an overnight success.  You had to market your business and build a customer base.  It’s the same with SEO  - to be listed on page one of search results takes some time and a little effort.