I really quite enjoy looking at search engine optimisation (SEO).  The world of Search and Social Media change dramatically month by month and these changes have such impact on those promoting or selling via the web.  It's like an ancient religion with the angry god Google and all his disciples who  do their best to keep Google happy but can never keep him satisfied for long.

Linking Building

The key ingredient that made Google the company it is today, is their focus on link popularity in determining search engine rankings.  That is to say, in it's most basic form, the more quality links from other websites you have to your site, the better ranking it will achieve in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Meta data, Friendly URLs and Content optimisation

Most people understand the importance of link building but many fail to realise that there is a fair amount of additional work to prepare your content, meta data, URLs and page titles to Google's liking.  If a search engine bot can't find enough tasty tit-bits of information on your site to correctly index it for your customers, then no matter how many external links to your site, if your site is not being returned for the phrases your customers are searching on, then you have a problem.

Decent Content Management Systems (CMS) are already preped for SEO.  WordPress, for example, is very SEO conscious out the box, whereas Joomla requires some additional components to bring it up to scratch.  It's really important to understand at least the basics of SEO from the start of developing your site.  A lot of it is common sense but each blog post (yes, you should certainly have a blog!) has to be written primarily for the human reader but also with the search engines in mind.

Three Beginner Guides to SEO

There is little point in me writing a post on the intricacies of SEO, while I know a fair bit about it, there is soooo much already out there from people much more experienced than I.  Below, are some great links that I've picked up to get you on your way in the land of SEO.

FIRST...  This guide is from the Search Gods themselves.  Try and understand the background behind SEO, how Google interprets your webpage, indexes it and displays it in it's results pages. 

Google's Guide to SEO (PDF 22 pages)

SECOND...  So you now have a rough idea how search engines work.  Next you need to decide what your customers will enter into Google to initiate their purchase or research process. 

Keyword Research Beginners Guide

LASTLY... How to beat the system!  What tweaks can you do to optimise your pages for the phrases you've selected so that they are more likely to appear at the top of the SERPs? 

SEOMoz Beginners Guide to SEO
SEO Cheat Sheet

Enjoy and Good Luck!