The concept of Search Engine Optimization is a funny one, and I want to talk about two things before I get into the actual subject.

First, it's quite likely you'll read my summary, which I've attempted to make brief, clear and jargon free, and think - that's not SEO, that's PR of programming or copy writing, or whatever it is you do. SEO isn't like tuning a car or installing a new motherboard in a computer - it's much less easily definable and more a highlight of several disciplines.

Secondly, trying to optimize your site to be found by Google and whatever other search engine is like studying for a college entrance exam. They're meant to test your intelligence. You try to study to do better on them. Did you just succeed in doing better at them, or did you in fact become more intelligent? In attempting to tweak your site to make it show up higher in search results for your targeted audience, you may very well make your site better for that audience.

OK, enough meta discussion.

Here I'm going to tell you how to save $10,000 by doing for yourself what an SEO company would do for you. They'd talk to you for a while to figure out what you're trying to do, then look at your site, act like they're your customers, then give you recommendations.

First thing you do is go to Google's Webmaster Guidelines (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769). I'll quickly tell you how to get there from google.com as you'll find lots of other good free stuff there. Go to Google.com, click Business Solutions, click About Google, then click Webmaster Central.

So print out Google's Webmaster Guidelines and get yourself 3 different color highlighters - one for your copywriter, one for your programmer and one for your PR/Marketing folks. This might be overly simplistic, your media buying people, user experience experts and various others should be involved, but I'm sure you'll be able to figure out stuff for them to do. Just keep a good key of what the different highlight colors mean.

Now go through your print out and start highlighting. The document boils down to the following:
-no cheating
-make good content (not pictures, text)
-build the site well
-tell people
-profit

Here are the rest of my thoughts on the matter:
outbound links, or those linking off of your site, are not specifically mentioned aside from the "Don't participate in link schemes..." comment. This might mean they don't have any value in the mind of the Googlebot. Some will argue about this. I think they round things out if nothing else.

Some people think nice URLs/URL rewriting (where pages have nice, meaningful looking addresses) improve ranking. I don't know of any evidence to support the theory that URL rewriting helps in SEO ranking. If you can do it easily and painlessly, I recommend it. The addresses are prettier, more comforting and probably easier for users to remember, but I wouldn't spend a lot of money working on this.

It's believed that Googlebot and other robot spiders that comb the Internet get bored and annoyed with long pages overloaded with links. Big surprise. Who doesn't. Don't do it. Make content interesting and usable. Go so far as to bring in a usability expert, or even just grab some of your customers and have them use the site.

Remember the "make good content" point from my summary above? Here's some clarification. Google suggests you use a text browser, liked Lynx. What this all points to is accessibility. Accessibility is making a site accessible to those with disabilities. Think of how Googlebot lives out it's life and build your site accordingly. It can't see your images, it can't listen to your podcasts, and it can't figure out bizarre, complex navigation or logic. So have transcripts of your audio, text alternatives for your images, and make your site easy to get around in without Javascript, Flash or anything else getting in the way.

Finally, talk to people about your site. Clients, friends, colleagues, etc. Ask them to look the site, giving them assignments to find things. Ask them to try to find the site. Take notes and do something about what you learn.

Register your site with Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, Technorati and anything else that might make a difference, and do what they recommend. Don't pay anyone for a listing. Test your site regularly.

Use a tool that regularly makes a sitemap that you can submit to Google and anyone else who wants it. Check out Google Base and hook into it if you possibly can. Regularly update your content and tell everyone you can about.