It is not actually very hard to learn, it is just incredibly specific. Whereas the subject itself is so broad.

Assuming everyone wants to be ranked by Google, I would advise to make them your main priority. Google themselves have multiple help tools for the average user such as the AdWords Keyword Tool Here. Using that you can find terms to help out.

There are loads of guides most likely online, but here is how I SEO for a specific page.

Choose an overall theme for the page. If your page was about broadband speeds say, you would assume the main phrases would be "broadband speeds" "broadband performance" etc.

Head over to the Keyword tool and get 10-20 of the most searched for terms for your phrases. Use these for the search terms themselves and be sure to include the text in the actual page. Do not use search terms that do not appear in your content.

If you need more specifics say, but I'm sure others can help more than I. That's the one tip I find more helpful than others though.

To employ someone or not? Hmmm it should not really be needed if you have technical knowledge you should be able to learn quickly. In regards to whether its an ongoing need to stay high, it should not require constant updating. (Although I am not positive)

Emmie87 wrote:
> My basic understanding is that you create pages on your website which can't be seen and they have the keywords on or something?? If i am way off then by all means let me know and again treat me as a newbie.

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Fairly far off I'm afraid :P Sorry. I'm not entirely sure what you mean about creating a page that can't be seen. There certainly are parts of pages that search engines will see, but users won't, if that's what you mean?

In terms of SEO, and ranking well for your chosen terms in search engines, there are so many aspects involved. I'll run through a few here.

Firstly, you need your web page designed, content-rich and coded up.

Secondly, you need to look at your page's META details (page title, keywords etc). If you look at the source code for probably any webpage you come across, you should see tags such as <title> and <meta name="keywords"> etc. These are visible to search engines, while only the Page Title is visible to users without looking at the source. Warhunt glossed over this below, but I recommend researching META tags and keyworded content closely for this.

A lot of 'beginners' tend to stop at just the meta tags/content, but other things that search engines take into consideration are the number of other sites that link to yours, the age of your domain name (it's widely regarded that domains/websites that have been in existance over a number of years are 'trusted' more than newer ones), page URLs, size of website and just a ton of other things.

Basically, it's just a case of doing a lot of reading. Try a few things, and see what works best for you. There's no set way to rank in the top 5 (unless you're trying to rank well for crappy terms), otherwise everyone would use that method, right?

I know my reply is of litle help. It's just not something you can explain in a few paragraphs. I'm sure Garin/Hmmm... will agree... guys...?

So on www.sehbac.com (one of our clients)
i looked at the source on their homepage and it has

<meta name="keywords" content="double glazing uk, double glazing, double glazing windows, double glazed windows." />

at the top, now freeola has a lot more than this in there, am i not looking at it right or is there more details i am missing (i am sure it is not this simple but am i heading in the right direction??)

So (sorry to go on and probably sound stupid)

Those META Keywords are what google is going to find, and as such the more relevant words you have in there the better but then not to overdo it. It just seems like there should be a lot more than what is in there. Such as - Conservatories Ipswich, Conservatories Suffolk etc

But nothing like that is there, yet we pay out a lot of money for people to do this SEO and aim to get us as near the top of google as possible. I think we may have to loose them. Employ someone as our web person and have them do SEO aswell. Just then we can offer complete web media aswell.

Pay someone who has proven results and ask to speak to several of their past clients to see what their track record is like. Some SEO guys like being hired in a freelance way, or part time to do a few hours a week on a site.

The SEO field is quite specific nowadays and the best experts of the field would probably not specialize in much else (you mentioned maintaining websites and hosting) so perhaps hiring freelance would be the cheapest way since I doubt you have that many sites for an SEO expert to spend 5 days a week promoting sites.

SEO can go hand in hand with content, since the majority of where you rank in a search engine is to do with the quality of the content on your site. Promoting your site is a continual process, however  so is fresh content and search engine optimized content which also helps rank, would you be hiring someone to keep your sites content up to date too?

Promoting sites can include paying for advertising space also, SEO is not the only way to get your website found...

It would probably be better to hire a website project manager who could then outsource services as and when needed as well as maintain website hosting etc.

Sorry to be so vague, obscure and bitty but this subject is just that.

If your interest in learning more about SEO then i recommend investing in Search Engine Optimization for Dummies.

As a complete newbie I was advised to buy this book

Getting noticed on Google by Ben Norman, with the help from the guys on this forum although my site is not the best in the world I have managed to place it from number 30 odd to number one on google for most of the search terms I am after.

I have to say I did have alot of help from this forum so perhaps look back at my pleading posts ! and buy the book !

I know I have loads to learn and things change !