You sure can! Surprised by this answer? Let me explain. You own a Ford Focus (yes, the car) and you need to replace the side mirror. Ask yourself this question: Can I remove it myself without taking it into a car repair shop? Same answer as your first question! A search on Google can bring you to this link.

Nowadays the resources for SEO are almost endless. There are several free tools available which can help you with your SEO. Besides of these free tools there are tons of good forums and these communities are open to help you with almost any question (be polite!).

Aren’t you afraid you will be out of a job with this kind of advice?

Good one. Short and simple: No. Why? Because there will always be website owners who don’t want to do it themselves. Their expertise isn’t optimization and they don’t feel confident enough to do the job. There is more to it then having the ‘manual’. You need to have basic knowledge of HTML.

You also need to know how to use a ftp-client to get your files up to your server. Let’s not forget you need to have time as well. SEO can be time consuming. You need to do a lot of research: keywords, link building, competition, etc. Optimizing your site can’t be done in a weekend unlike replacing a side mirror of a Ford Focus.

So where do I start?

Like I mentioned before there are a lot of communities and websites that can get you started. First I will mention some ‘must read’ websites:

• SEOmoz - Rank Better

• Search Engine Land

• SEO Book.com

You might think the list is short but these sites are packed with useful information. SEOmoz just reached the 2000 mark for premium members (congrats Rand!) and this website will give weeks (if not months) of valuable reading material. So do the other two I mentioned. I suggest you get yourself a good RSS-reader (Mac, Win, Linux/Unix) and start subscribing to the above feeds. Make sure you subscribe to eightdegree’s rss feed as well!

What about the SEO tools?

A good start is using SoloSEO. SoloSEO is a do-it-yourself SEO Project Management system. It does a great job of keeping things simple and we all know we want things to be simple and easy! SoloSEO will all of your tasks in one place: keyword management, link building, content tracking, etc. It will provide you with all the necessary tools and keep it all organized.

Pricing is pretty decent (5 domains for $29.00 a month) and it will save you time! You can find other free tools scattered online and you might end up populating your own spread sheets. Don’t you rather take your dog for a beach walk? I know I want to!

I still think you’re a fool by sharing this knowledge…

You’re entitled to think so but I strongly believe in sharing information. Without sharing there wouldn’t be the internet! Sharing knowledge and information will eventually make us all grow. It’s not about you as an individual. I can go on in detail about my views of the world and human mankind but if you’re interested in my opinions I recommend reading my personal blog mindplunge.

Happy Optimizing!

What better of a showcase then your own website! I finally have some time to optimize eightdegree.com for the search engines. As of today my website can’t be found and I’m one of the thousands web designers here in the Sonoma county area. I’m pretty successful getting clients ‘up’ in the Search Engines and now I’m using eightdegree as a showcase to what is possible.

Like I said eightdegree (ED) can’t be found. Search terms like: “web design, Santa Rosa CA” comes up with zilch for ED. We are going to change this! The next coming weeks I will keep you informed about the status of this project. Expect stats, graphs and how I managed to get a higher ranking.

This week I will focus on the on-page optimization: On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. This normally consists of pages written in the HyperText Markup Language but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines, for example Microsoft Word or PDF formats. On-page optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text. It may also involve reducing redundant HTML codes (aka cruft) produced by Web page authoring tools and restructuring the site to produce better linked and focussed page content.

I’ll keep you posted!