While optimizing your website for search engines is vitally important, depending on your goals and current design of your website, you might be surprised to find that hiring a “SEO specialist” could be a waste of money…

It is likely that you, yourself can follow some simple steps that will generate visibility and save money in the long run. In other words, that $300/ month you were budgeting for an SEO company may be better spent on developing a site from the ground-up that is SEO friendly, and then following the steps below to increase your listing in the search engines.

Here are a few simple steps you can take to increase your web visibility, while in many cases achieving the same, if not better results.

1. Make the content on your website easy for Yahoo! and Google to find you. This means including using your keywords naturally and frequently in a) relevant page titles, b) page keywords in the metadata tags, c) in the page text content itself.
2. Do not embed important words as image graphics, unless you include those words in other places.
3. Stay away from sites entirely in flash, unless you are working with a developer who knows how to make them visible to search engines, you give each page it’s own unique address.
4. Post relevant, keyword rich content to your site on a regular basis.
5. Create a pay-per-click campaign with Google AdWords, where you pay only when traffic is directed to your site.
6. Create listings for your company with industry-specific sites or city search listings. Often times this can be done for free.
7. Read blogs and articles related to your industry, and post thoughtful comments (thoughtful being the key word!). Provide a link back to your site.
8. Install analytic software on your site, such as Google Analytics, so you can see how people are finding you check out their behavior. You can then increase the frequency you use certain keywords, or be inspired for other topics to write about.

If you’ve taken these steps, and are wanting to take your company to the next level, by all means, an experienced SEO company may be the way to go.

And if not, what are you waiting for? By following the simple steps above, you will see the results of being visible to your market, and will have taken control of your own SEO destiny.