How will people find your website? Some of them will have seen your URL in advertising, but most won't. People will go to a search engine and type in words that represent what they want.

Maybe they need to:

• overhaul a lawnmower engine,
• find kitchen contractors in Moon Township,
• find a Sewickley jewelry store,
• thaw a frozen pipe, or
• buy a 26 inch mountain bike tire.

In each of these cases, they're probably going to type those phrases into a search engine, and it's probably going to be Google. Your goal is to have your website appear in the results when people search for the things your business provides.

Here's an important exercise: what phrases do you want to do well for in Google? It might be "Pittsburgh financial consultant", "Pittsburgh 401K rollover", and "Pittsburgh retirement planning". With those phrases in mind, you build your website to optimize your position in the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization seems like magic, like a black art. It's not. It's a combination of established technique, planning, and attention to detail. Generally, the stages of SEO are: building a technically accessible site with good content, choosing and developing keywords, inbound links, and social media.

Nobody can guarantee your position on search engine results. What we do for clients is to offer to take a short list of key search phrases and optimize their website for those search phrases. We get very good results.

If you already have a website and would like to improve your search engine performance, consider our Pick-10 SEO Special.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - The SEO Fundamentals Pyramid from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.