How can I get 1st placement on Google without paying for the privilege?
When beginning to do some search engine optimization work, it can often be intimidating. Most people have no idea where to begin. I am going to give you some free methods to drive more bridal traffic to your website and climb those search engines.
First of all, you can make a squidoo lens. If you haven’t heard of these yet, it is basically a one-page blog that is created step by step. You can add different “modules” to your squidoo lens. You can add text modules, picture modules, link modules, and many other types of modules. Squidoo is very self-explanatory and walks you through the process when you are completing your first lens. Squidoo has very high authority when it comes to search engines results pages (serps). It is very common to create a lens and immediately rank on the first page of google on a few of the search engine pages for the keywords that you chose. Also, putting a link on your squidoo page to your home page is very valuable in helping your home page climb the serps.
Another great way to generate traffic to your website and to climb the serps is by writing an article and submitting it to Ezinearticles. Like squidoo, Ezinearticles rates very well within the search engines. If you write a good article which contains your keywords 2-3 times in it, you can often find yourself at or near the top of google. Writing and submitting articles to Ezinearticles is so powerful that many internet marketers use it as their main source for driving traffic. A good article with carefully researched keywords can provide you with hundreds of even thousands of unique visitors to your website. The only downside is that it can take up to a week for Ezinearticles to approve your article for viewing on their site. When submitting articles and keywords to ezinearticles, it is important to track which keywords work and which do not. Do not worry, they make this very easy on you. When you log into your account, you can view all of the articles you have written and exactly how much traffic they have generated for you.
If you are able to create videos, this is a great way to drive traffic to your website. Programs such as Camtasia make video creation easier than ever. Also, there are many services that will create videos for you. Video marketing maybe be a little bit too advanced for the beginning internet marketer, but at some point is definitely something you want to experiment with. Videos are a very powerful marketing tool on the internet.
Do not forget about advertising with classified sites, such as Craigslist. Craigslist is a site that lists online classified advertisements. There are many categories that you can advertise your product or service. It is certain there will be a category that matches what you are promoting. Craigslist is one of the most visited websites in the world and is certain to get a lot of targeted leads for your business. It is especially effective for companies that are based in larger cities. When posting on craigslist, be sure to only post one ad per day, because if you abuse it, they will ban your i.p. address and you will be unable to post. This is done in an attempt to prevent spam, but it makes it more difficult for those of us that are just utilizing it like it was meant to be.
Social bookmarks are a great way to get instant traffic to your website, as well as help your website climb the serps. There are many social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicous, and Reddit. All you do is create an account and submit your website with some details. After you do this, you can get some instant traffic from people that view your social bookmark. Also, having social bookmarks linked to your website helps you climb the google rankings.
These are some quality methods to start doing SEO for your webpage. Different methods work better for different people. If you are a highly skilled writer, then it is wise to submit as many articles as possible to Ezinearticles. Find out what works best for you and then go with that method. It is good to have a mix of all of these methods, to diversify your traffic. Now go drive some bridal traffic to your website!
I think the thing to remember is that you ALWAYS pay for search engine placement, whether you’re paying with time or money. Many beginning marketers or bloggers starting out have quite a bit more of the former than the latter.
But you always pay. 
Good tips on the “free” ways to promote content. A lot of posts tend to be vague but you definitely got the good ones. Looking to pages that currently rank for your keywords and posting there if possible with a link back is another good tactic worth mentioning.
Thanks Jason. I will definitely checkout Squidoo, as you have suggested.