Post away please!
PurpleClouds asked me to post some search engine optimisation techniques. I think some of them have been posted elsewhere on the forums. Before you start you need to decide what keywords you want to optimise each page for. You cannot optimise for everything.
Search engine optimisation is a big topic and can get quite technical so I thought I would just point out some of the more important points:
Get a domain name and point it to your web space (rather than a weird web address supplied with free web hosting).
If possible have your important keywords in your domain name eg:
www.wildlife-photography.co.uk.
Make your page names reflect the content of the page eg: bluebells.htm is my bluebells page.
On each page have a <title> tag that reflects the content of the page and includes important keywords. eg: <title>English Bluebell - Hyacinthoides non-scripta</title> . Note: This is not the title displayed on the page but on the top bar of your browser. It is VERY important.
Add a meta description tag in the header. Eg: <meta name="description" content="English Bluebell - Hyacinthoides non-scripta - Wild flowers in an English Country Garden">. Keep it short and succinct.
Add a meta keywords tag, but this is not so important and is not used by many search engines. Eg: <meta name="keywords" content="English Bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta Wild flowers Country Garden">.
Use header tags on the page to identify important keywords. Eg: <h1>English Bluebell</h1>
Always use alt tags on images describing the image. Eg: <img src="../a/i/flowers/bluebell.jpg" alt="English Bluebell - Hyacinthoides non-scripta">
If possible put plenty of text on the page and include relevant keywords. Around 250 words is great.
When linking from one page to another, add keywords to the link text. Eg: A catalogue of English birds, animals, flowers, trees and fungus found in an English Country Garden. birds would link to the birds page, flowers to the flowers page, etc.
Make a site map which contains links to all the pages in your web site. Link to the site map from your home page if possible.
Add a sitemap.xml file. This is a special file which contains information about all the pages on your web site and is specifically for Google. See
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for more details.
Get as many high quality links TO your site as possible. VERY IMPORTANT.
As others have said in this thread "Content is King". Providing useful content is vital. Also I completely agree with Richard above - you can get plenty of visitors to your site using Google Adwords. What you then need to do is convert vistors into sales. However, I think it is always worth optimising your site for the search engines so that you at least maximise the free traffic rather than just relying on Adwords.
I hope this is useful.
Jenny