People ranging from successful entrepreneurs to technology consultants, and sometimes those in a marketing department, understand little about how Google works, and what makes a good SEO strategy. I assume this is why I often meet people who have gotten burned by some snake oil SEO salesperson in the past. Not everyone needs to know much about SEO, but this is what anyone running a business or working even tangentially with marketing should know about search optimization. This post is by no means the most comprehensive SEO guide available. But I believe this will give enough of an overview to slow the growth of snake oil ad agencies. I’m keeping the focus for most advice on Google because they are the largest search engine, and most of what helps a site rank in Google will apply to Bing, Duck Duck Go, and any other web search engine. As far as I can tell the top five factors to help a site rank and get meaningful traffic are: Research Focusing On Business Value Most talk about SEO, centers on how to rank, not what to rank for, but any optimization trying to get a website to a number one Google result that doesn’t focus on business value is a waste of effort. Showing up as the number one result for a phrase in Google means very little unless that phrase is searched by people interested in the website and products. A friend once wanted to start a travel blog called “strategic…SEO For Non Marketers: What Every Business Person Should Know About SEO