If you're not thinking about the relevance of Google penalties when it comes to the effectiveness of your overall SEO scheme, then think again. If you have been thinking about it, then ask yourself, "How is it working out for me?" At this point, Google has arrived at a moment in time where it's penalising sites that use paid links and it has a search engine that shifts its algorithm so regularly that your site's ranking in the SERP (search engine results page) has become a daily guessing game.

The core SEO techniques have been the same for a while and will continue to remain the same for some time to come. I am no internet marketing guru... My expertise lies in fitness, yet I have made a presence on the web with minimal effort and I'm going to show you how to do the same.

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to listings and links to web sites that are produced on the pages of a search engine directory (like Google, Yahoo or MSN) when a keyword search term or phrase is entered. There are two types of results that are produced.

One way to find out if message posts within a specific forum software package are search engine optimised, is to visit a site using that software, copy a recent forum headline and paste it into Google and do a search (surround the search headline with quotes so Google knows exactly what to look for).

Nearly three trillion spam messages are sent each year - 13 times the total snail mail delivered by the U.S. Postal service. The average wired American is hit with nearly 2,200 spam messages annually - this after most ISPs have filtered 80-90 percent of the junk messages.

A popular blog can reap HUGE dividends-not only for backlinks and search rankings, but also for your company's overall sales. Do a search for "blog success stories" for plenty of examples.

This program allows you analyze your web site: get Google Pageant, incoming and outgoing links for each page of your web site. One of the best ways to drive traffic and attract customers to your Web site is to improve your Google page rank. Based on these various techniques, they assign a page rank to the web site.

Don't underestimate the power of this one. You can get a great return on investment, especially if you post in relevant and on topic forums. If you spice up your forum signature with an enticing offer, then not only will you gain inbound links, you will also score quite a few interested visitors.

The basic idea for forums is as follows: find a large, well populated forum with decent traffic. Create an account, and setup your signature to include a link to your site (assuming forum rules allow for this). Now, join in! Start threads of discussion with well thought out questions, and participate frequently in other debates. Every time you post, your signature (and link) is shown.