Recently, I have witnessed many new self-proclaimed Internet marketing gurus flooding the scene with a plethora of catch phrases and their own recipe for the secret sauce of success. Each time a new article is published or a book is released, my inbox is flooded with overzealous Internet consultants armed with the confidence fueled by their newfound knowledge.While I would never discount the knowledge that can be gained from someone with hands-on real-world experience, I am flustered by those that sell their ideas based on nothing more than theory. I say, “Show me a portfolio of more than one site, then your ideas may have merit… otherwise don’t waste my time.”

The thing that slips their mind is that all of the articles are public domain, and anyone in the business is actively seeking new ways to increase the exposure and marketing performance of their website(s). For those not afraid to do a little research, every search engine has extensive documentation, hints, tricks, and examples on techniques to optimize your website.

Google has done an outstanding job of writing documentation on how their system crawls and indexes a website. You can view the Google Basics site at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=70897.

As with Google, Yahoo offers detailed guidance for submitting your site for indexing within search engines. The instructions for submitting your site to Yahoo can be viewed at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/indexing/indexing-06.html;_ylt=Av3OleH86oCfgTXvyRcje4ZYqCN4.

Take control of your own Internet marketing efforts. Whether you create and maintain “description” and “keyword” meta tags or you hire a consultant to do your bidding, the results are the same. The search engines are not able to distinguish between text entered by you or someone else.

The “real” secret as with any marketing effort–Internet or otherwise–is to make sure the content is relevant. Moreover, the keywords and description meta tags need to contain words and phrases that best represent your site.

Of course, to remain one step ahead of your Internet competition, leverage other forms of marketing to drive traffic to your site.