• Developing the site according to specific industry standards - XHTML, CSS.
• Ensuring that the density of keywords on your pages is as high as possible.  This includes utilizing your keywords in as many places as possible – page title, content, ALT tags, headings, etc.
• Including META tags that properly identify and promote your business.
• Properly identifying which portions of your site should and should not be indexed.

There are no shortage of companies that claim to specialize in SEO.  Many of them even offer guarantees that they can get you listed in the top five search results for specific keywords.  They charge exorbitant fees and make inflated promises – and they rarely produce results.  There is no “guarded secret” to having your site listed high in the search engines.  Consistency, compliance, and a lot of hard work is what it takes – no different than building a brand offline.

Making Your Site Known
Even before your site is completed, you need to start thinking about how you will make others aware of it.  Making your site known can be done through a variety of methods.  Depending on your site and the market you are in, some methods will be more effective than others.

• manual submission to search engines and web directories
• generating content on other sites that refers to you – news articles, reviews, blog entries, favorable mentions, etc.
• building inbound links – If you can have other, well-established web sites create links to your site, it lends credibility to you and will generally increase your search engine ranking.
• viral marketing – Offer methods or incentives for users to spread the word about your site and to encourage others to visit.
• paid listings – You can pay to have your site listed for specific keywords at the major search engines.  You can pay to have banner ads for your site displayed on other prominent sites.  Depending on your market and what you are trying to achieve, there are a number of different options here.