SEM

Getting exposure to your website has more to do with marketing rather than Search Engine Optimization. Both are necessary, but driving traffic to your site has more impact on building long-term relationships.
One of the best methods of SEM is to write articles and have them posted on ezines that have a similar direction as your site. The search engines rate your site by the number of links coming back to your site (back-links) especially when your topics are the same.

One great resource to find ezines is the http://www.ezine-dir.com site. Another is going to http://selfgrowth.com. You’ll find authors that have ezines and will be more than happy to collaborate with you.

Another resource that I have used that is very successful is http://www.submitedge.com who will create three articles for you for $50 and submit them to all the ezines they can find that have a connection to your topic. It takes about six weeks, but you will definitely see a tremendous difference in the rankings of your website.

Last year I discovered Facebook and it has single handedly had the largest impact on my website rankings. And it’s affected all my sites, not just the ones with the links on Facebook.

The higher the ranking the more visibility, but beyond that, you’ll get noticed by others who can make a huge difference in your success.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is what makes the difference between those who have a great website and no one knows and having all the right people find your site because your site has been optimized with the right keywords to match your topic.

You can try to do this on your own or hire someone to do it for you. Frankly, I prefer to hire an expert because I think I have finally hit my maximum capacity to take on anything more involved than keeping up with what I’m doing currently. I like to use elance.com and encourage the experts to bid for the job. Locally the price ranges is $500 to $5,000. And there’s no way to know whether someone did the work well or not.

Through elance you can find resources at a fraction of the cost of a local consultant. You should check their references and talk with a few of the people that they have worked with previously.

One of the things that has helped all of my sites is to have back links, a major website like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, etc. having a link on their site. Of course writing articles about your topic and submitting them to as many ezines as possible.

Also, if you can get others who have a website with a similar topic give you a link on their site and you place a reciprocal link on your site, it will help both of your rankings.