So, in an attempt to bring order to chaos, I have organized hereunder my "Top Ten Tips for Approaching SEM Without Freaking Out:"

1. Go Look for Yourself: See where you currently come up in search results when you use a search engine. Try words you think people use, and also try the name of your own company and maybe even your own name. You'll be surprised where you pop up.

2. Explore: Ask your colleagues, competitors, vendors, clients and other denizens of your industry how and what they search for.

3. Revise: Once you know what people in your sphere actually search for, you have a shot at building or revising your site to meet those newly discovered needs.

4. Think Like a Search Engine: Search engines need to give great search results or their users leave. So they often look for content rich sites which will in turn provide satisfying search results. How can your site wedge into that scenario?

5. Think Links: Links give you double payback. If you are in the right "link neighborhood," your site gets more respect from search engines. Plus, the links themselves will send you traffic that quite possibly will surpass what you're getting from the search engines.

6. Think People First: Write for people first before search engines. More and more they can spot copy that is overly manipulative. Many can identify keyword stuffing. Play it straight. That isn't to say you can't spell some keywords out instead of using their pronouns. But I wouldn't beat things into the ground.

7. Think "Must-See" Website: Create one. Spend some money in order to give people something of yours they can refer to others, be it online or off.

8. Put Out a Press Release: This raises your profile online and creates more inbound links to your site. The wire service links to you, other sites that pick up those feeds point to you, and so on. Of course, this assumes you really have something of value in your press release and back at your site.

9. Follow the Industry: Don't waste your time optimizing for yesterday's trends, technology or tools. Study the industry so you make the best use of your time and resources.

10. Try Xanax: Search engine optimization and marketing is an ongoing discipline. You won't see results overnight. Get over that expectation and learn how to adopt a long-term perspective, painful as it may be. That's where the Xanax helps. :) LC