Competition is fierce for all but the most obscure phrases, and yet your web designers keep telling you that without top positions on the big engines, your eBusiness can’t flourish.

But you’re maintaining a site and growing a business at the same time, so how can you possibly find time to master the intricacies of search engine positioning?

Well for starters, the dream of being No 1 is only that: a dream. Suppose you do get to No 1 with a given search term on a particular search engine. How long will it remain there? Not long, if the keyword is of interest to others.

Why? Because lots of people are looking for the top spot - including hundreds who dedicate every waking hour to trying to create the centre of the online universe for their particular product. So forget it. There are far more effective channels for your energy.

Instead, devote what time you have available to building optimised pages which are rich in related content. Submit them. Then move on to more important things while the engines rate your efforts.

Be content with any page that ranks anywhere in the top 10 on a handful of search engines, and realise that no page will rank as well on all of them. Also come to terms with the fact that many pages will not rank anywhere near the top.

So how do you do all this if you haven’t appointed a specialist search engine optimisation firm? Well, firstly, write your pages for your visitors, not the search engines. Only when content is ready for your visitors, should you even consider search engines.

Then consider each page relative to your keyword list. You may find a couple that will rank pretty well with a given keyword just as written. Fine. Edit the title, description and keyword tags to emphasise this keyword. Maybe try to work it into the copy a couple more times. But do nothing that disturbs the flow of the message to your visitor.

Try building entry pages, often called gateway or doorway pages. While there are many approaches to this task, be sure to avoid any which could be guilty of spamming the engines. They’ll blacklist you.

Look at your keyword list and select one you can use repeatedly while covering a topic of interest to your visitors. The idea is to build great content, so repeated use of the word must not detract. Be guided (but not driven) by the following:

The content of the Title tag is likely to be the title used in a search engine listing. Thus it is mandatory that it be a headline that draws readers into your description. While holding firmly to this objective, use the keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible.

The content of the Description tag is likely to be what the search engines will use in the listing. Here the objective is to be sure that the searcher clicks to your site. This is pure advertising copy: it must compel the searcher to click the link. Again, while holding firmly to the goal, use the keyword as close to the beginning of the statement as possible. Use it a second time only if it makes sense to do so. Include the keyword and variations in the Keyword tag as a suggestion to the spiders of what to expect on the page.

In the body of the page, use the keyword in an H1 tag at the top, and also in subheadings where possible. Again, position the keyword as close as possible to the beginning of each statement. Remember that your visitors will read this content, so avoid awkward statements merely to make the search engine spiders happy.

Within the content, use the keyword as often as you can without detracting from readability, as close to the beginning of paragraphs as possible, and in the last line on the page. Recommendations vary, but expect to get the best results when the keyword is 2% to 3% of the copy. Some suggest as high as 10%, but you’re likely to find that at this density, the value to visitors is lost. Successful search engine optimisation is a fine balance, so be prepared.