If you have the time and resources and you want to save some money, there are several ways in which you could optimize your site hands-on. If you wish to and have some knowledge, you could cover some of the basics up-front you will have a much better understanding of the structure and content of your own site and a search engine optimization company can take you the rest of the way. Some of the most effective SEO techniques are the simplest to implement but you should incorporate these alongside developing your site. It will be more time-consuming and technically complex to do this retrospectively.
An important attribute of your site is its content. If you ensure pages are filled with quality content which is grammatically accurate and relates strongly to your core business, then you are well on the way. Regularly updating and adding new content will get search engine spiders returning and indexing regularly, and visitors will return if they know your content is current. Think about how searchers might reference your site and incorporate obvious search strings in your content.
Use images only to illustrate content, not to replace it – particularly in headings since these are what will be noticed by search engines and appear in search results. Make sure your coding is valid and as simple as possible and don’t obscure your content by making it only accessible through flash-based or similar navigation – you want your site to be as fast and as easily accessible by search engines as possible. Having a good foundation to start off with is half the battle and your search engine optimization company can get on with the other half.