Smorty provides a well renowned service for building better search engine results, however it is only half the work needed to gain a higher position than your competitors.
Search engine optimization is made up of two parts. On page and off page optimization.   The following steps and links will best explain a do-it-yourself process to optimize your website for the major search engines.

 On-Page Search Engine Optimization

On page optimization relates to the changes on your actual website pages. Key changes include keyword choice, keyword density, placement, formats, link structure, Meta tags, Alt tags, Google sitemaps and verification.

 Find the Right Keywords

The basis of ALL search engine rankings is keywords. Users enter keyphrases in Search Engines to get information they need, It is VERY important that you optimize for such keyphrases.

When selecting your keywords, look for more specific phrases to start with rather than mainstream simple words. e.g. if a site is about mobile phones then it may be a better solution to optimise for "nokia N72 mobile phone" rather than "mobile phone". This means you will have less competition and more targeted visitors.

Now that you have a list of your main keyword phrases, you need to find all the related keywords which people are also searching for.
Use this tool to find related keywords to your main keyword. This will also show you how popular each keyword is.
Click to use Keyword Playground Tool
You may find that the lesser searched keywords will have less competition so it will be easier to get higher search engine rankings and more visitors.

The following tool will analyze your current website to determine what keyword phrases you are optimized for, then it will list all related keywords so that you may also include these on your site. A perfect tool for broadening your websites exposure on the search engines.
Click to use Website Keyword Suggestion Tool

 Check the Density of Your Websites Keywords

Keyword density refers to what percentage each keyword appears on a page or your entire website relevant to all other words. e.g. The Keyphrase "mobile phone" may have a density of 5% on a page relevant to the total page content.
If you are optimizing for a keyphase then it's best to have a density of between 3%-5%. Any more may be considered search engine spamming and any less may give it too lower importance for your page. The keyword density includes Alt tags on your images and text. (text appearing when you hold your cursor over an image).

Use the following tool to check the density of keywords throughout your website.
Click to use Keyword Density Check Tool
If the results show that your main keyphrase has the highest percentage but is lower than 5% then it is well optimized.

 Check the Quality of Your Websites Content

Search Engines are known to act upon websites that contain Duplicate / Similar content.

Your content may be similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages from within your own website may be similar to each other. The following tool allows you to determine the percentage of similarity between two pages.

The exact percentage of similarity after which a search engine may penalize you is not known, it varies from search engine to search engine, Your aim should be to keep your page similarity as LOW as possible.
Click to use Similar Page Check Tool 

 Check the Placement of your Websites Keywords

It is vital that your keywords and phrases are prominent. This refers to the placement and format of the keywords.

You should place your main keywords as an H1 tag in your header, then the less important keywords can be used as H2 and H3 tags in the content pages of your site.
These header tags should be in order on your pages. i.e header 1 at the top and header 3 at the bottom.

Within reason you should bold, underline, italic and hyperlink your keywords when used in a sentence to build importance. As you develop importance on a keyword throughout your site, you will build a site-wide theme showing these as the main keywords the search engines understand your site to be about, therefore ranking you higher than other sites which are less optimized.

Write your keywords at the beginning of a sentence and at the end to show it as natural as possible. DO NOT enter your keywords separated only by a comma, it is search engine spamming and you WILL be penalized! The more natural your keywords appear the better the quality of your content.

 Check your page links: How many links on a page, linking to bad neighborhoods

Search engines pay attention to the first 100 links on a page, these are the ones they follow first and give the most importance to if placed on a keyword.

Try to keep your links to less than 100 and only link out to quality websites which are also listed in search engines. If you link to websites not listed and that also link to other bad websites, you can be de-listed from search engines. These may include directories which asked you to link back to them as a requirement to be included.

 Broken Link Checker

Use the following tool to check your site for broken links. These are links in your website which no longer go to the correct page (possibly if a page was removed)
Click to use Dead Link Checking Tool 

 META Tags

The site title, site Meta and page Meta descriptions, site Meta keywords and page Meta keywords are one of the most important aspects of building a keyword theme within your website.

Most blogs and independent website allow you to change all Meta tags. Start with the site Title, this is the first line of text generally in blue which appear in the search engine listings. It's the single most important line of wording to describe your site. Be short (about 6-8 words), include your main keywords and try not to use stop words (and, by, the). A good example may be "Discount Mobile phones online store".

The Meta description is the second most important text within your website. Try to use all your keywords in a clear sentence with the most important keywords at the beginning of the description or at the start of a sentence. A good example may be "Buy discount mobile phones including brands like Nokia and Motorola. Best sellers include the Nokia N72 and Motorola Razor mobile phone". Keep the description to less than 200 words. It is good to write a Meta description for each page specifically including the keywords for that page.

Try to include all your main keywords in the Meta keywords tag of your website. Make sure they are visible on all pages. Use the most important keywords at the start of the list and don't use any which are not written in the content of your website.

 Google Sitemap and Verification

The most important thing about optimizing for search engines is that you get indexed. The following link will take you to Google webmaster tools. From there you can list your sitemap with Google so that Google spiders can crawl your websites pages, then verify your website so Google can provide you statistics.
Click to use Google Webmaster Tools 

 Off-Page Search Engine Optimization

Off page optimization relates to the inbound links or link popularity of your website. The best kind of inbound links are from sites with related information to yours, high Google Page Rank and lots of unique content. The older the inbound link and the more natural it looks to search engines, the more importance it will be given.

 Inbound link Checker

As inbound links account for half the optimization process, it is important that you build as many quality inbound links as possible. Search engines see inbound links as a vote for a website, the more votes a website receives and the more important the person voting, the better the receiving website ranks.
If the inbound link is on a keyword, then you are also receiving a higher search engine rank for that keyword.

Use the following tools to analyze which websites are linking to you and on what keyword the link is from.

Click to use Anchor Text Analysis Tool

Click to use Backlink Summary Tool

 Submit Your website to Search Engines and Directories.

Use the following links to Get listed and build inbound links from search engines and directories. DO NOT link back to any of these directories and DO NOT pay for a listing. Only list your site with free ones which are easy to do.

Smorty blog advertising is the most useful tool for building quality inbound links.

www.dmoz.org This is the most important directory in the world to get listed in for a good inbound link.
http://www.submitexpress.com/submit.html Submits your URL to all major search engines

 Domain Age Checker

The age of a domain often affects your rankings with search engines. An older domain which has been indexed in a search engine for a long time has built trust, and is therefore given a higher importance that a younger domain.
If you are just starting a business and are looking at registering a domain name, try looking for one which is already over 1 year old and well indexed in the search engines. It may be the kick start you need to quickly jump over your competitors.

Use the following tool to see how old a domain name is including useful stats such as the number of indexed pages in each search engine.
Click to use Domain Statistics Tool