As a search engine optimization specialist, I often run across search engines of different sorts than most people are aware of. This week I stumbled across a free site that is used by journal- ists to do background checks and fact checking on sources of news stories. I am also an advocate for personal and financial privacy and find privacy invasion particularly offensive, so this search engine offends me.

The http://www.pretrieve.com/ Free Public Record Search Engine - Person Search is an example of databasification of all public records. It's instructive to take a look at results of a search for yourself in this free people search engine that is apparently used often by journalists. The linked page above takes you to site home page which is a form allowing you to search for a person, business, address or phone number and results pages can be frightening.

The results are listed as questions on Pretrieve.com site in a row of tabs labeled "Property Info, Criminal, Court, Professional, Local Info, Miscellaneous" and "Criminal" tab (Criminal) inserts your name or that of person you are searching for in each possible source of criminal information under a link labeled "Registered Sex Offender Search" then a question with searched name and state inserted: "Is anyone named (your name here) a registered sex offender in "your state here"? If you searched for your own name, it appears in that frightening position and startles you quite handily.

The arrangement of tabs with criminal info first must be done for dramatic effect it has on what would otherwise be a rather mundane search of bland information. But when I went ahead and pressed that frightening link, I got a gratifying "no information could be found" result page. Whew! Then again on link leading to "Federal Inmate Search" I got a gratifying "Sorry. No Inmate Named (Your name here) Race: unspecified Sex: unspecified found." on new window launched on Federal "Bureau of Prisons" site search.

Since I write frequently online, there are hundreds of sources of information on me available in one of results tabs labled "professional", I was happy to see that my occupation was correctly listed as "Search Engine Optimization Specialist" with sources coming mainly from resource boxes of my articles appearing across web.

I. - Choose Your Weapons (keywords) - You need to choose WHICH keywords you want your website to focus on for potential search engine listings. It can be better to focus on achievable high rankings (moderately searched specific terms), than for high rankings for keywords that are ultra-competitive or too general. Focus on getting "some" high ranking results and then shoot for more popular terms over time.

II. - Lock and Load. Prepare Your Site - SEO on your website is mainly about putting a high concentration of your target keywords in strategic places on your pages.

III. - Party Invitations. Get Your Site Listed on High Pagerank Websites - If you want Google to recognize your website, it must be "mentioned" in good places on Internet, which builds your sites' Pagerank. A high Pagerank link in a directory or on another similar website can make all difference in world with getting good search engine listings. Getting "reciprocal links" is free and builds your Pagerank. One-way links are even better.

** - Bear in mind that Google search results can vary from day-to-day

Note: The target of this SEO plan is Google. If you can get your website listed in Google, other major search engines will tend to follow.

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Tools You'll Need for Your Own SEO Solution Project:

1. A website in which you have CONTROL over its contents (the html). An affiliate web page that you can't change can't be optimized for you. You'd have to start your own website and put affiliate contents on it. 2. You need to get Google Toolbar if you don't already have it installed. Enable Pagerank display feature. 3. You'll need some type of website tracking (your host may have possibly provided it already) that can identify search engine spider hits (primarily Googlebot hits). 4. You'll need a basic understanding of Google Pagerank and crawls (search engine spiders). If you don't know about them, read below, otherwise you can skip this part.

Google Pagerank

The Pagerank system, in short, is basically Google's system on a 1-10 scale of measuring a website's importance. Google.com has highest Pagerank (PR) of 10. A brand new website domain has a PR 0. There are other websites that discuss how it's calculated. Here is a quick gauge: 0 - new website, 1-2 a "drop" of popularity, 3 - popularity is beginning, 4 - an established web presence with periodic attention from Google, 5 - a stronger presence, 6 - a semi-powerful website that gets crawled daily, 7 - a powerful, frequently visited website, 8 - a very, very powerful website, 9 - 10 - Off charts in power.

The Pagerank of a website influences a. How often it gets crawled for future search listings, b. How high those search listings will be listed. The Pagerank of a website will appear in Google toolbar (with Pagerank enabled) when your browser is on page of that website. This plan will show you how to increase your Pagerank and frequency of crawls by Google.

Spiders and Crawls

For search engines to "index" your website, it will send its "spider" robot program to "crawl" your homepage and any other pages it "sees" on your domain. Visits by a spider are erratic, at best. Spiders will visit your website more frequently if it thinks "your website is important". With Google, importancy is measured by Pagerank. I discuss raising your Pagerank is Part 3.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. - Choose Your Weapons (keywords) Obviously, some keywords are searched more than others. In nearly same proportion, more websites will optimize for more popular keywords over less popular ones. This means that you have a higher chance of success (less competition) if you target "moderately" searched keywords, instead of going straight after "the big ones". I'm not trying to underestimate or limit your success. My strategy for anyone is to achieve "some" success first, and then increase it over time. Many webmasters will "swing for fences" and after not having any success for so long, bow out of race entirely.

I'll give a rule-of-thumb way to gauge your competition for optimized keywords. With Google toolbar on, search Google for broadest keyword term that describes your website. For this website, I chose "small business". You'll probably see a bunch of high-powered PR7 and PR6 websites that have your term in title. Observe their Pagerank (PR) rankings. Getting listed on front page for a popular broad term is a tough battle and a long process that may be too high to reach for a new website.