I've taken a trip to the dark side ... and I may just stay here for a while!

Ok, the title and the Darth link are a little bit extreme; I haven't developed a penchant for heavy breathing, a powerful, bass-like voice or a habit for reckless over-usage of a light saber. Yes, you can breath a sigh of relief, the reference to my new position on the dark side is more of a metaphorical reference to my conversion to enthusiastically singing the praises of SEO (previously I whispered them out like a shy little chorister, now I'm belting them out Mariah Carey style).

However, my new dark side is just as geeky as an obsession with Star Wars. SEO has that reputation. But, and here's my first revelation, it's not rocket science. It's not a secret code or IT language that only the enlightened few can understand. It takes a bit of time and thinking but there's a lot of common sense involved. Most importantly it works.

As a writer and marketing professional I've known about SEO for a long time; I understood the theory, the reasoning and had written pieces of basic optimised copy here and there. But as someone who prides themselves on embracing new communications methods, marketing tools and best practice, this didn't feel enough. So, during a few quiet evenings in dull old January, I decided to get into the knitty gritty of SEO and optimise my own website - from key words/phrases, page title tags, meta tags and meta descriptions to internal hyperlinks and external links, I made my way through my site.

And it wasn't just good practical experience of SEO for me. My Google rankings have improved, traffic to my website has gone up (measured on Google Analytics) and I'm already receiving more work enquiries (that have good potential) directly through my website.

SEO is not a scary concept and it's not the dark art you might imagine. But it does involve a certain amount of copywriting skill. A pet hate of mine is websites that you can see have been SEO'd due to the clunky and clumsy inclusion of key words and phrases. When badly written, SEO can disrupt the flow of your text, put your readers off and give your website an amateurish feel.

There is no need to fear SEO but you do need to plan it, integrate it subtly and most importantly get the measurement tools in place so you can see the results of all of your hard work.