Many business owners are making large investments in SEO services without first learning the basic housecleaning rules of SEO.

There are many simple techniques that can be used to get a business website ready for proper search engine optimization and help garner better natural search results at no cost and in just a short amount of time.

One of the first ways to ensure that a website is ready for the major search engines is to create an XML site map.

An XML site map is not the same as the site map that helps humans navigate a website. Instead, an XML site map is one that does the same job for search engines, helping them to better find their way around a site.

Similarly, a good optimized website should include instructions for robots, usually called a robots.txt file.

This simple text file gives search engine robots simple rules to follow on a website. Robots from the major search engines are coded to follow such files and the instructions can even tell robots not to index certain content.

Other SEO techniques include image tagging and descriptions, as well as descriptive internal links.

Before embarking on an SEO campaign, it is important to make sure that your original website is not a mess. An internal cleanup, coupled with these housecleaning tips, will yield better search results in the long run.

Copyright 2010 dzine it, inc. Website Marketing Company All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.