SEO is yet another techie acronym to add to your arsenal. It stands for Search Engine Optimization and is all about optimizing your website’s position in search results. Manybooks have been written about SEO and websites are dedicated to it. It’s big business—and it should be.

Showing up higher in search results (like when you go to Google and type in a phrase or keyword) usually means more traffic and more business.

SEO is part science and part art. The SEO experts figure out what search engines look at when they rank websites. Then they figure out what can be tweaked to improve a site’s rank in the results. Some SEO tactics are of questionable value and others are borderline unethical, but the mainstream of SEO thought is simple, basic improvements that will boost your rank in search engine results.

It’s usually simple things like figuring out keywords for your site and then putting those keywords in the right places. Those right places include the title bar (the text that shows up at the top of your browser), any headers, headlines or bold text on a page, and the meta data (helpful information in a page’s code that’s not visible in a browser).

It’s really not rocket science. What search engines do is look at a page and try to figure out what’s the most important thing on that page. For a page to be the number one search result for something like rocket science it better have the words “rocket science” and other important keywords in key locations on the page. Otherwise it’s probably not really about rocket science.

Good SEO is about recognizing the same thing for your site. So if you’re in the rocket science business, you’d probably have keywords like rocket science, rockets, propulsion, physics, NASA, booster, missile, etc. And you’d want to use those words in your headlines and other important places on your site.

SEO is something that should be taken seriously although many believe that it is something that can be done haphazardly. The problem with this outlook is that you will receive random results. SEO takes hours of work and the experience to understand the kind of consistency necessary for a successful increase in search engine ranking.

1. The first question you want to ask yourself is do you know HTML and other simple programming languages. When working on your website, you must be able to conduct on site SEO editing that will ensure your web page is the most relevant. You will also need to know PHP and CSS to increase the load time and efficiency of your web page.

2. Do you have enough time to make your site search engine friendly? Aside from editing the static pages to make sure they will rank well, you need to add content constantly to your website. This can take hours of time and effort because the content has to be enjoyable or useful to people while also including key words you want to rank well for.

3. Will you begin your SEO project soon? Many people who plan to start an SEO project in the future forget to implement it because it is too difficult. This is why many people hire outside help to ensure the job is completed.

4. Are you willing and able to spend the time needed for SEO? Could your time be better used for some other task? This is a conflict many people face when their business is growing beyond what one person can do. Sometimes leveraging an outside SEO firm can be more beneficial even though their initial price tag is high.

5. If the SEO project becomes a larger, more time intensive job, are you willing to take the extra time needed to make sure everything is done correctly? When you create a plan, make sure you stick to it.

6. Are you able to stay consistent with your SEO effort? Remember SEO is very time sensitive because the bots are programmed to understand what you try to do to manipulate search results. Make sure you use different SEO strategies consistently.

7. Can you safely edit your web page’s content without changing its ability to convert visitors into customers? Many people fear that by altering their content for SEO purposes they change the site’s ability to sell.

8. Do you have tools necessary to find key words you need to target? Many marketers settle with public key word tools that offer average key word results and never find the low competition key phrases that will bring in the large amounts of easy traffic.

9. Would you rather use your time doing the grunt work of link building or planning and growing your business? This is an important aspect of the small business. Do you spend your time doing what an employee could do to save money or do you hire the employee, manage them, while working on different projects to grow?

10. Do you have a plan for expanding your SEO efforts with the changing technology and SEO strategies? Many companies keep static SEO plans that become obsolete, which cause them to lose their top ranking of high competition key words. Make sure you know everything that happens in SEO strategies and always keep your plans dynamic.

Now that you have 10 basic questions to ask yourself before you consider taking on the task of optimizing your website, you are able to make an accurate assessment of your business and make a choice.