You’re aware of the importance of SEO to the success of your business, and now you need to start optimizing your site. So where do you begin? You begin by creating a strategy. Your SEO strategy should define exactly how you are going to go about tackling the process through a series of steps that you can follow as you go along. Here are those steps, in order of importance.

Determine who will be responsible. Are you going to be in charge of optimization yourself, are you going to bring someone onto your team to take care of it, or are you going to hire an outside SEO professional? If you choose to do it yourself or to hire someone onto your team, you’re going to be climbing a long, steep learning curve. It’s a curve that offers a lot of rewards as far as helping you develop confidence in your abilities, but the longer it takes you to climb it, the longer it will take you to see the results of your efforts. And the longer it takes to get results, the longer you’ll have to wait before you see an increase in profits from your online efforts.

Find Someone to Answer Your Questions. If you’re going to take care of your SEO in house, then you need to find someone who knows what he’s doing to answer your questions. This may be another business owner who has experience with SEO or an SEO professional who consults with you as needed. Either way, you need someone to help you out when you get stuck and aren’t sure where to go next. And if you can learn from someone else’s mistakes, you won’t have to make them yourself.

Create your Budget. Set aside a portion of your marketing budget to dedicate to SEO. Many companies designate anywhere from 2% to 6% to SEO alone. Even if you discover that your budget doesn’t meet your needs, at least you’ve recognized that SEO is important enough to set aside money for.

Create Good Content. The single most important aspect of a successful SEO campaign is creating high-quality content, written specifically for human visitors, and adding it to your website. The more valuable your content is to your visitors, the more successful your SEO campaign will be. Don’t be gimmicky or try to fool the search engines. Just write good stuff and the results will follow.

Create a Quality Site. Make sure your website is aesthetically pleasing to visitors and easy to navigate. You’ll keep visitors much longer if they can find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

Build a Community. Join social networking sites and forums that give you access to a targeted audience. Participate in the conversations taking place there and avoid using such sites as a springboard for the hard sell. Build up the trust of the community and you will see your fellow community members become your customers.

Create Your Link-Building Strategy. Avoid the temptation to build up your links by using link farms and instead aim for a few relevant links from well-respected webpages.

Measure Your Outcomes and Make Appropriate Changes. Find a good analytics program that will help you determine where your traffic is coming from and where on your site they’re going. This information is invaluable for helping you determine what kinds of changes may be beneficial.

Most important, don’t be afraid to use the services of an SEO professional, either full-time or on an as-needed basis. The success of your business depends on good SEO, and there’s no one better to help you with that than someone with years of quality experience.