"Before you worry about Web site design, start with the hard work associated with building a substantial site. First, develop a list of keywords that are important to your business. Do the keyword research necessary to find out how often those keywords are actually searched on the search engines.

Carrie Hill has an excellent article on keyword research (especially for those who need to avoid paying the bucks to have access to "better" software). As Carrie mentions, do the keyword research first, then begin to determine how to organize your Web site to be found for these keywords.

The organization process is called information architecture, or, simply, how to make information findable, manageable, and useful. If you want to be found for certain keywords, make sure you actually have a page of your Web site with content. Search engines want to rank Web sites that offer the searcher a quality result.

Build a Free or Low-Cost Web Site

Even if you're working with a tight budget, you can build a search engine friendly Web site. In fact, some of the most search engine friendly Web sites -- blogs -- can be free to create."

Read the full article:
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3627675