The intricacies of SEO all seem like Greek to me. Is this something that can easily be done by me, or should I "farm it out"?

If you think that it is something that I can do, can recommend the best tutorial?

You can do it yourself, I do and I'm certainly no expert.

What I've done:

bought SEO for Dummies
bought Market Samurai - helps with keyword research etc. and tracks your rank
read blogs posts, discussion forums etc. related to SEO

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Bridie's Typing Services - specialising in transcription services
The professional's choice

I agree with Bridie! While I do feel there are some aspects to SEO, like any specialty, that are in-depth and require a certain level of knowledge and skill (and as a result, might not be something you can work on personally) there is a TON you can do on your own and it's all readily available information. It's just a matter of implementing it.

Be sure to install Google Analytics on your site so you can keep track of the effects of your work. It's also a great tool for analyzing keywords and understanding what is already bringing people to your site (so you can work on increasing those margins)

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I agree that SEO is a critical part of a website and without it, your website is no good if no one can find you. I will check out that SEO for dummies and the Market Samurai. I haven't heard of them before. I have several books on SEO but I start to read them and all the stuff in there is so foreign, I end up giving up.

If you are optimizing locally you may be able to get by doing it yourself with some of the self help books the others mentioned. If you are going national like I did, you need a professional optimizer. I am lucky, I am a certified optimizer, but most are not. I was able to do my own with good success. Think real hard about the keywords you are selecting to use in your meta tags and your web site title keywords are very important. Make sure your content of the web site has lots of keyword enriched words as well.

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Dawn M. Draper
The Virtual Paralegal
http://www.thevirtualparalegal.com Virtual Blog

Bridie, thanks for the tip on the Dummies book! I do SEO on my own as well. I'm making progress slowly but surely!

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Pam Deyerle - Transcriptionist in the Richmond, Virginia area
The Perfect Word Transcription Services

The problem with DIY is finding the time unfortunately, SEO can often take up such a big chunk of time having to set aside an hour or two each day..

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Telephone Answering virtual assistant
alldaypa.com

hmm, SEO is hard especially if the word you're targeting to rank for is a very competitive term.

I'll let you in on a little secret. Those SEO companies who sell SEO services use automated software. How'd I know? I have a client who owns SEO software and I do support stuff for him. Thing is, if you do it all by hand it takes time and effort but it's definitely doable.