Hi there

I'm new to this forum so apologies if this kind of question has been asked many times before. I've developed a new website using an ecommerce shopping cart system (CS Cart) that seems quite search engine friendly, for example it allows me to enter Page Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords & Search Words in the admin section for each product.

My domain name was only registered a few months ago, but it is returning results on a few phrases in Google, however i want to have proper SEO work done on the site to boost it in the rankings. Now i've had SEO work done before by a freelancer on another site who littered my homepage with keyword after keyword, almost rendering the text unreadable. I do not want this to happen to my new site.

So i'm asking if SEO work is something that is easy to learn & do myself, or is it just better to pay someone who knows what they are doing (either a good freelancer or company). If it is better to pay someone experienced to do it, does anyone have any recommendations please?

I know link-building is important, is this something that can be left to cheaper link-builders to do rather than the more expensive SEO guys? I have used a platform called Odesk before, where there are many people available to do link building at very cheap rates.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Many thanks

Mike

link building is NOT SEO.

I think it is more cost effective to learn it yourself if you have the time, if you don't have the time then finding someone will be much cheaper then a company. If you choose to do it yourself there are many things you can do. Everything I know I learned on my own by searching Google for information and reading books. I have worked with many companies on SEO work and setting up keywords.

First make sure you have Google Analytics setup and watch where your visitors come from and what keywords they are using. Also make sure you have an .xml sitemap and submit it to Google.

Utilize all the power of social networking online, it has in fact proved to be very effective for a number of big and small businesses alike as businesses can be conducted on a global platform. With the help of such social networks your business gets the strength to reach millions of other people online. But just like the networking in the real world the basic principles do in fact apply here also. People should have the same interests because this interest is what actually connects you with others and them with you.

As far as blog and article submissions if you have a company blog it can help your site get indexed more but there are also many free sites you can submit too that allow backlinks to your company site. I have a rather large list if you need some ideas I would happy to share.

Press Releases are also a good idea if you have any big updates going on. There are many sites you can submit to for free and a few you have to pay a small fee to but are well worth the money.

As many others have said there are so many forums on the net they are a great way to get backlinks to your site in signatures. Basically, a curiosity inducing one-liner and a link to your website is great. Once you have edited and saved your signature, it will appear at the bottom of all your comments in the forum discussions. That means, the more you participate in the discussions in the forums, the more people see your semi-ad written on your signature. I promise, this will encourage people to visit your website, and hopefully buy from you.

Website URL submission is another way to get more links to your website. This will help your website get ranked high on major search engines, thus getting more visitor traffic by, well, submitting your website URL to the major search engines. You can buy or subscribe to software that will do this, but it is quite possible to get a good return by submitting manually.

I hope this information helps you in some way and by all means make good use of the forum and all the helpful individuals on it. Ask questions and we will all try to help you out as much as we can.

What HostNine said and just talk about what you offer (keywords and keyphrases) on your site. Use proper coding techniques. (title, header(s), rich anchor text etc)

You don't have to (and shouldn't) mention your keywords 100 times on any page. Just read the text (or have someone else read it) - if it sounds like you're saying the same words too many times, you are!

Just link building is not enough , you should hire an SEO expert for this and keep an eye on whatever he is doing for your site.

Well, however you havesome knowledge about SEO but still I do not recommend you to do it yourself because "little knowledge is dangerous thing"

I will suggest you to hire an Expert SEO person or company who ue only white hat SEO.

I disagree - do it yourself. SEO is not rocket science, in fact, it's really very very simple. It is however very time consuming, hence why it's an expensive skill.

Simply put - SEO is getting Google to understand the contents of your page. Once this is done, you need to build inbound links, which essentially count as votes, to give Google a reason to rank you well. The more votes, the better you rank. All votes are not equal though, and votes from sites with more authority are much more valuable.

Before you start you must do a keyword analysis, making sure you're choosing the right keywords that are getting the right amount of traffic and aren't too competitive. The once you've started building your links, you need to monitor your traffic, their sources and your conversions and adjust your plan as necessary.

Have a read of my SEO blog posts here (and please pardon the self-promotion) which is a guide to practical SEO if you want to pointed in the right direction.

mike there are lots of other things than link building. Google Filter is not only based on Link Building, there are lots of other signals that affect the ranking of a webpage. Putting proper Meta Tags, Code Optimization, Proper implementation of Content with relevant tags. Directory Submission, Press Release Submission, Blog Posting, Social Bookmarking, SMO and other stuffs should be a part of your optimization and promotion plan.

I recommend you to hire an SEO expert for this . There are a lot of things to do .

For me I prefer to study myself. I just remembered that it takes a month for me to self study about link building. As of now I know all the basics but I still trying to study advanced link building techniques. Anyways, if you don't have much time because of your business or busy on your regular job you can hire a freelancer at odesk.

Its always best to do it yourself since you have greater concern for your site than if you hire someone. But doing seo for your site could really be time consuming. So if you don't have the time, then probably you would need to hire someone.