There are many legitimate companies that help improve a website’s placement in search engine rankings. There are quite a few bogus ones too.

Before you dive into the business of search engine optimization (SEO), let us help you answer a few questions and provide a few basic tips for helping yourself in this process.

There aren’t any tricks that you need to know. In fact, the “tricks” should be avoided.

And anyone who claims to know how the Google algorithm works is either lying or works for Google. Same goes for any company that guarantees they can get you page one placement.

But everyone agrees on this: good copywriting on your website is imperative. This is where your keywords reside. If someone is searching for you, what search phrases will they use to find you? Are those phrases in your website copy? As long as your text is readable by the search engines (if it’s text, not a graphic) and it contains the keywords searchers are looking for, you’ve taken step one to improving your ranking.

Make a list of keyword phrases that you think accurately represent you and would be logically used by a searcher looking for you. Then look at your copy. You might need to start from scratch, preparing copy that reads well and has appropriate usage of those keyword phrases. Appropriate means it’s written as advertising copy, not just a string of keyword phrases.

If you have the ability to edit the content on your website through content management software, then you can begin editing your content to make improvements.

The hard part – and the part that good SEO companies can assist you with – is identifying keyword phrases that you can logically expect to do well in. In other words, if you want to rank well against a keyword or keyword phrases that produce 15 million results, your chances are slim to none. If you define and refine what searchers might be looking for, then you can more realistically cut out a niche, improve rankings and capture a share of the search universe.

While we’re talking about copy writing, keep this in mind as well: once you’ve driven traffic to your site with good copy that is “keyword rich,” make sure your copy will ultimately create the desired result. How sucky would it be to drive tons of traffic to your site without getting any new business, any interest from prospects, etc.? Experts agree on this point as well: make sure your copy is customer or client directed, not company directed. Try to read your copy from the potential client’s perspective. Is it all about how great you are? What’s in it for them? More of them and less of you is a good thing. According to Google, you should base your optimization decisions first and foremost on what’s best for the visitors to your site.

Another important element of website development that will improve your site’s rankings is the page titling. This is another form of copywriting that is similar to creating chapter titles. The page title is simply that: the title at the top of each web page. These should be written with the same focus on keywords that body copy should. You probably won’t be able to change these titles because they are part of the site code, but your website designer can make these changes. It’s important to review this element of your site to make sure you are communicating the right message to searches.

A third factor that affects your ranking is probably the hardest to address. This involves linking, specifically having other websites include a link to your website. Research indicates that Google and other search engines give prominence to websites that are considered relevant by other sites through linking. You can initiate a reciprocal linking program (you link to my site and I’ll link to yours) with clients, members, complementary agencies, etc.

In the old days it was a common practice to write keyword phrases into your website’s code, hidden from the viewer, to attract the attention of search engines and hopefully improve rankings. Many sites still have these keyword phrases coded into their site’s meta tags. But research indicates that’s not given any weight by search engines anymore. It’s what is visible and readable that is measured. However, Google does sometimes use the description meta tag (a paragraph describing the company or organization written into the code) as the text for its search result snippets.

Last tip: having the ability to add news and events to your site can improve your ranking in the searches. It gives you more opportunities to add important keyword phrases. Having the ability to archive these stories keeps these keywords in your website.