There's no huge secret to achieving search engine rankings.  No firm has the magic secret to achieving top rankings so if it sounds too good to be true, likely, it's too good to be true.

Basically, what makes a search engine marketing firm effective is fairly simple.  It's 20% knowledge, another 20% experience and then another 60% of skills and effort.  It's not just copywriting but it's a combination of skills. 

These skills range from research to marketing to copywriting to technical savvy.  Search engine optimziation taken as a long term strategy can help businesses acquire new visitors, prospects and sales leads. 

Here are some of the key tasks that are involved with search engine optimization and marketing:

1. Search Engine access to all content.
   While this may sound easy, often pages are blocked from being easily found by search engines.  These are typically issues which must be addressed technically.  Some of the areas to review including site maps, robot texts, duplicate content, website infrastructure and much more so before you consider your next website re-design, get SEO integrated into your site from the ground up.
   
   
2. Links from the Home Page.
   All of search engine marketing is about what search engines can view or find, not what we, as people, can view or find.  I often see small business people focus on design at the cost of assuring a search engine optimized / friendly website.  Learn what you need to achieve from SEO and how it gets achieved so that it can become a part of your next website project.  Use this list as a way of working with a qualified firm to help you achieve a balance of both.  Gain a balance between the two requirements up front and not as an after-thought.  In many cases, choice of CMS (content management system) or website editor will make a key difference.  Again, it's not what we see that counts, it's what the search engines find that counts.  Choice of everything can make a difference to your SEO results.  Don't break ground on your next project until you're fully aware of what it takes to achieve top results.
   
   
3. Friendly website addresses or URLs.
   None of us like those long ugly links which make no sense and similarly, neither do the search engines.  With a good CMS or website, difficult to read URLs do not need to be the case.  Choose a good CMS or an SEO knowledgeable programming shop that will overcome this issue.  Make sure the site generates keyword friendly URLs as the standard. 
   
   It's good for the people who want to find you and it's good for the search engines which are trying to rank your website.
   
   
4. Duplicate content may cause your page to be dismissed.
   Don't plagerize.  The cost of duplicate information is complete omission from any ranking at all.  For larger firms and websites, it is a matter of good workflow management and content management to assure that content does not get duplicated in different areas of the website.  Or, get technical staff to apply canonical link elements to tell search engines which is the correct page to rank.
   
   
5. Target your keywords.
   Know your target audience. Do your research.  Keyword relevance will be important to getting quality visitors.  The larger the set of keywords, the larger the keyword management task.  If you are looking to reach a larger number of keywords, expect to plan a larger keyword budget to review, manage, sort, organize and identify opportunities for success.  Optimization will also have to occur over a larger number of pages, so expect to create more content now and over time to achieve a large number of targetted results.
   
   
6. Editorial vs. SEO goals need to be in balance.
   In an organization, there are so many different goals people would like to achieve.  Sometimes people within the firm may have different editorial goals such as more succinct content which might work well on print brochures but not so much for SEO purposes.  Search engines like to rank substantial and information rich content.  If there are people within the organization looking to make the content read like it belongs on a paper brochure, get the SEO team's web copywriter to incorporate a content style which will make your SEO project a success.
   
   
7. Optimize your pages and templates.
   With the adoption of CMS to edit and manage website pages cost effectively, the choices are not all the same.  CMS platforms offer a wide variety of SEO performance capabilities.  Some CMS platforms provide only singular SEO templates for the entire site limiting your ability to target a wider range of audiences most effectively.  From the start of your website project, make a website CMS selection which will provide the highest amount of SEO possible.  This will make a huge difference in the long run.  A more SEO optimized CMS will allow you to optimize for a wider range of keywords.  And, you'll be able to target multiple audiences more effectively.
   
   
8. Optimize your website assets.
   Once you've achieved an optimization of the written copy, you also want to optimize images as well as video.  Both images and video, in addition to well optimized text, will give you higher rankings or more visible rankings from image searches or video searches.  In fact, Google's Image Search is ranked #3 behind Yahoo! and Google Search, of course.
   
   
9. Domain Relevance or Strength
   Start now because longevity counts.  Build traffic from other sources such as email marketing, social networking and more.  Links and citations from other sources are also an important factor if you want to get your domain name recognized as being relevant.  These take time and are grown organically.  Search engine marketing or optimization is a long term strategy for a company to earn new visitors and prospects even if results can start to appear within a few months.
   
   
10. Measure and Analyze Search Traffic
    Are they finding you?  Do they find your content relevant?  What else do people search who use these keywords?  Marketing insights come from measuring.  Measure from different perspectives and evaluate visitor behaviour.  The hours spent on reviewing and analyzing metrics can become endless to understand and unearth overlooked opportunities.  Instead of competing in oversaturated and overly competitive keyword marketplaces, achieve the same top results by solidfying your rankings with more niche opportunities at the start.

Be it top search engine rankings or satisfying other communication goals, start with creating new, information rich content which will get people to follow or re-visit your website on a consistent basis.  Use social media and email marketing to facilitate this for people.  You will soon be on your way to online marketing success.