Looking for Search Engine Optimization.....

Do you do it yourself or hire someone?
If you hire someone, can you recommend them?

Do you have any tips/tricks/warnings that you would like to share? (regarding SEO)Here's some INFO straight from Google: What's an SEO? Does Google recommend working with companies that offer to make my site Google-friendly? .  And, of course, there are many hits from a search on SEO: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=SEO&btnG=Google+Search[size=14]Search Engine industry is continually changing. You need to know which of major SEs is powering which of the smaller search engines and then you can know where you can focus your optimizationefforts.

For example, Google has control over some free and paid listings of AOL, netscape, hotbot, Ask Jeeves, Teoma and Lycos.

Yahoo also control other Smaller SEs.

The point is that by inserting yor site into a bigger SE, you can also automatically include it into smaller SEs (in their free or paid versions)

Here are 5 don'ts that you should not include in your SEO process.

1) Irrelevant links:
Don't link with sites that does not match the theme of that of your site. If you are a web hosting site try to link at least with a site that deals with autoresponder, if you feel that linking with a web hosting site will INCREASE your competition.

2) Don't keyword stuff your meta tags:
SEs will punish you if you do that. Input not more than 3 keywords there.

3) Irrlevant keywords:
They can penalize you if you use irrelevant keywords in your title, meta tags, and URL.

4) Don't use doorway pages containing only keywords:            
If you use many doorway pages containing only many keywords and not containing good content you are likely to be banned.

5) Avoid the FFA pages:
Don't post there. Such sites have extremely low RATINGS and you will lose your ranking points.



Here is tips on improving your search engine ranking:

1) Use RSS feeds:

Create RSS feed for your pages and then post them to RSS feed directories.

2) Also you can download the Google Toolbar and
then find the pagerank of various classified sites. Choose those sites with  a pagerank  of at least 4, then post an AD related to your site there. This will boost your site's ranking.


[/size]SEO firms do nothing that you can't do yourself if you're prepared to put in the time.  >Look here<.