As previously posted here, SEO, SEM, and a lot of vaporware, you can save a lot of money and obtain way more results if you implement your own SEO strategy instead of putting your business in the hands of someone's not even good at doing her own web site.

I'm targetting this post mainly at small/medium business with a limited budget available to promote their online presence. Obviously the following is a free and easy approach you should consider even if you are Fortune 500 company and plenty of money to waste. Also consider this applies mainly to Google, but let's be honest, there's just one search engine out there.

Three simple SEO rules to rank in the top 10, three simple SEO rules to rank 1st

The following rules are all you need to know:

1. Interesting and well written content rich in user oriented keywords
2. Clean and standard code, semantically structured
3. Cross linked logical URLs

Three simple SEO rules explained

Interesting and well written content rich in user oriented keywords

Publish content relevant to your business, as well as interesting for your readers/customers. No matter the lenght try to fill the content with as many keywords as you can, while not going nonsense. That is, try to explain your thoughts using all the keywords a user is likely to use to search for the object of your business. Refrain the keywords list mania resulting in a totally nonsense, and spam like, list of keyword. Users aren't stupid, neither Google is.

Clean and standard code, semantically structured

Use standard compliant XHTML and CSS code, separating content from appearance. Go semantic, applies titles <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5> in their correct order. That is do not skip <h2> when going from <h1> to <h3>. Try to stuff some keywords in those titles.

Cross linked logical URLs

Go logical with your URLs. http://example.com/0,,2064305,00.html is not a logical URL. http://example.com/products/shoes/BlackTopSneaker do is a logical URL. Link to this URL from within your own site, from multiple points (ie: the product page, the shoes page, the product of the week page, the bargains page, the history page, etc.)

The results are there to prove what I'm talking about

Check the following search results to verify what I'm talking about. Please consider ranking 1st, or 3rd, or 10th once doesn't mean you'll stick there forever. Things do change fast, getting on top is one thing, staying there is just another matter.

Search results for specific search strings

• web content optimization rank 7th/49,500,000
• manage second life events rank 22nd/146,000,000
• second life events management rank 5th and 6th/106,000,000
• event management in second life rank 3rd and 4th/106,000,000

The above tips are provided "as is" without express or implied warranty of any kind. But they are free, and can hardly do any harm to your content.