SEO Demystified – What is it?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the art of altering and developing a website that can not only be found by search engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo but captivated by readers and ultimately drive leads to your business. Any site can be optimized but each business or company may need different channels in order to produce the desired result.
SEO is hundreds of small intentional details working in harmony to produce an effective website capable of drawing traffic and business.
Can anyone do their own SEO or must it be done by a professional? 
As with just about any business, anyone can conduct their own SEO but it takes research, time and diminutive attention to detail. SEO practices change all the time as search engines modify their ranking system. Procedures change and what worked one day may not work the next. Certain methods are traditionally consistent such as keyword research and usage. There’s no point to be ranked high for a phrase that no one searches for. You must do the research and find which phrase, as it relates to your business, gets the most searches while simultaneously choosing phrases with low competition. Going after the same phrase that everyone else in your business is vying for can be frustrating and fruitless.
Once you have determined a good set (4-6) of keywords or phrases, use them in your on-page content and in page titles and descriptions. Each website will have a set of Meta Data that should be customized for each page. Search engines look at this information as the outline structure for what the page is about. If they find the content is not what the page is actually regarding, the page will be not be ranked as high.
Search engines are also looking for relevant content that is shared and distributed among social media. If a page, website or article is shared, tweeted about, posted, liked or plus’ed, the search engine will credit it as more valuable to others therefore ranking it higher. The more buzz you can facilitate toward your information the higher that page or website as a whole will rank.
Use off-site sources to link back to your website. Use off-site blogs, social media, press release websites and hub pages such as squidoo.com, tumblr.com and hubpages.com to boost traffic and interest to your site. There are literally hundreds of places to post a link to your website including other people’s blog comments. Find related blogs and comment; most comments will ask you for your name, email, website, and comment. While not every blog allows for search engines to see your website (do-follow tag) some will and all readers will see your link.
Use original, creative content. To be found and ranked well for your content and your website as a whole, you must write unique, non-duplicated content. You cannot copy and paste from Wikipedia or any other blog on any website unless you post the copied content in quotation marks and credit the original author. It’s best to only do this for a quote or phrase and not the entire article if you want search engines to rank your site.
Search engines constantly research new ways to offer exactly what the searcher is looking for. What are you offering your readers and clients?
If you don’t have time to do this yourself, that’s what we are here for. Personal SEO performs all these tasks and more to get your site ranked and seen.