Whether you’re a small business optimising your own site for search engines in your spare time, or a larger business wondering whether to spend a small fortune with an SEO agency, it’s easy to get bewildered by the options available.  Here’s a simple starter kit of tips for basic search engine optimisation, inspired by an ex-colleague of mine, Simon Penson, who learnt his craft on the website of Todays Golfer Magazine, and now works with a range of clients on SEO research and copywriting.  The Emap specialist interest sites we launched together grew their traffic almost entirely through content-driven SEO and spent very little on paid marketing.  My own view on SEO is that it helps enormously if you are either a wordsmith yourself, or know a good journalist, so you can incorporate your keywords without distorting the copy. (more…)