If you want your business to be found by new customers on the Internet, you need to get serious about optimizing your website for the search engines--especially Google.

Ranking well in Google's search results can bring a huge amount of new business. You can learn how to do this yourself--I did, over the past 8 years, for the honeymoon registry and travel company I co-founded--or you can hire someone like me to do it for you.

Search engine optimization today involves many skills and techniques, from link-building to on-page optimization to click-through and conversion testing...and Google, Yahoo! and Bing are changing the rules all the time.  What worked great a year ago might not work so well today--in fact, it might even get you penalized by the search engines. 

Current knowledge of search engines and SEO tools, plus a strong understanding of business, customers, and conversion to sales are key to growing your business and making your SEO investment pay.

I'm an Associate at SEOmoz, writing articles for their main blog, and answering questions from the SEOmoz PRO members in their Q&A section.  In August 2010, I joined the board of SEMpdx, Portland's search marketing organization, which puts on monthly search marketing educational events as well as the annual SearchFest conference.