A website's success doesn't depend on its design, but rather its marketing. You could have the best looking site on the Internet, but if no one knows about it, it won't do you much good.

So once you have your site online, how do you market it? There are the free methods like reciprocal linking and submission to directories (which I suggest everyone does) and there are the paid methods like buying advertising. And then there's search engines...

"[According to Pew Internet and American Life Project] More than eight in ten American Internet users have gone to search engines to find information on the Web...Around one in four US Internet users... present queries on search engines on a typical day. Only email use outranks search engines queries as an online activity...."

Search engines are obviously the best way to attract customers, so how can you tap into it? Search Engine Optimizers will have you believe that you need to pay them hundreds (if not thousands) monthly so that they can implement the latest search engine tricks to get you the best position possible. But is this really necessary?

Let's take a quick look at what a search engine is: A Search Engine is a tool developed so users can find relevant, quality information quickly on the Internet. So what's the best way to get a good search engine position? Provide "relevant, quality information" on your website.

These tricks that the SEOs use to get high positions are just that - tricks. The major search engines are always updating their logarithm used to rank sites for two reasons:

1. Improve the rankings of sites with lots of good -- and frequently updated -- content.
2. Weed out the websites using these "tricks" to get high rankings.

So of course the SEOs will need to fix your site monthly because the techniques that worked last time don't work anymore. So why rely on constantly tricking the search engine into thinking your site is good? Just make your site good.

Okay, you now know you need to add relevant, high quality content to your website frequently. How much and how often? Well, these questions depend on your site, but it is suggested you add a new page to your site daily, or at least weekly.

That might sound like a lot, but keep in mind that Google (the #1 Search Engine) prefers short, consise pages on a specific topic as opposed to long, rambling ones. A few ways you can implement an "often-updated content" section would be through news (usually on the homepage) about your industry, interesting articles, or even a blog (like this).

Frequently updated content doesn't just provide good search engine positioning, it can support many other marketing techniques. If you decided to write a new article every week relating to your industry (or hire someone to do it) you could send a few articles out in a direct mail campaign targeting prospective customers who would find this information interesting. You could even have a monthly e-newsletter sent out containing your new articles, industry news, special offers from your business and anything else you can imagine.

Search engine optimization shouldn't be about tricking the search engines into thinking your site is a valuable resource if it isn't. It should be used to make your content pages more easily accessible to search engines. Good techniques your writer/editor should use when publishing the content online are:

• Use of title tag - The title tag should describe the page (not just say your company's name).
• Focus each page on a few keywords - Don't have long pages containing content about many different topics. Divide them up so that each page focuses on a specific topic. And make sure you use the same keyword throughout the content (if you sell websites, don't use web site and website interchangeably).
• Keep paragraphs short (2-3 sentences) and use effects like bold, bullet and numbering to make scanning the page easy for the visitor.

As long as you add content frequently to the site and the writer/editor uses the above techniques, you should have no problem getting a good search engine position for your keywords. If you would rather not update your site frequently, you can spend your time searching for people to link to your site or spend money advertising. The time you save not adding to your site, you will spend attracting customers from other marketing revenues.