Real Advice on Website Design / SEO

1. Don't lose money on a designer. This way you can edit your site.

2. Choose easy editing tools, for example, those provided by Yahoo Small Business (now unfortunately called Aabaco Small Business, but still linked from smallbusiness.yahoo.com).

3. Don't pay for advertising at first. It doesn't pay off unless your name is already out there.

4. Start out with a lot of keywords in your meta data, then get used to selecting the best ones, preferably ones you know from your site statistics have been used by people who find your site.

5. Choose good content for your page. Avoid illegal activity and generic, hyped-up content.

6. Update your site fairly frequently, unless you just don't care.

7. Watch your site patiently, and make strategic edits.

8. Be creative or professional or both.

9.  Don't just make one long page. Make a lot of shorter pages within your site, most of them (at first) linking from the main page or secondary menu page. This allows you to put keywords on every page (if you remember). But, to create a page you need to have a reason to put content on the page. So, choose a subject that has a form of organization.

10. Make sure your real name is on the page, because otherwise there is no way to work with your existing client base. Use your own name at least once or twice on every page if possible, to make sure people know its you.

11. Generate content for your page even when you're not directly working with web design. For example, you might include academic articles, creative artwork, travel photos, or your ideas about technology or history.

12. If web design is not the right thing, then try blogging with a similar idea. You can start a website too if you need more information displayed or if you want to promote your ideas and products.