I'm always surprised to find that most people have not realized that you don't have to finish your website in order to start the process of search engine optimization. Nevertheless, common sense works against this because you normally want to finish your site or product before doing anything else. How many of us are perfectionists that have to have everyone 'just right' in order to move to the next step?

Fighting your own impulses to complete all of your online work is really key to early SEO promotion. How many sites have you worked on putting in many hours, testing its functionality, and finally having it perfected only to wait two to four months to see it finally rising in search engines? If you start submitting your site early you'll be that much closer to the immediate SEO benefit.

I have found that it typically takes four to eight weeks of productive organic growth to get your site listed, indexed and ranked well. My advice to you is to submit your site to as many search engines, directories and forums as possible once you have your first landing pages ready. Also, consider submitting articles with your backlink to as many free content sites as you can.

Your best bet is to have some original content on your initial pages before you begin. I recommend at least four pages; a landing page, two detailed pages and one site map. You can arrange these in any fashion. Just be sure that you clearly label each page link from the home page with its appropriate header tags such as 'Site Map' so the search engine crawlers can index your site correctly.

This becomes even easier if you are using a blogging site such as Blogger. Follow the same rule by creating four entries making the very first entry a site map and adding it to the blog sidebar or footer. You want the blog to appear as close to a standard site as possible.

Using free articles to prepopulate your first pages or blog entries and changing them later is another possible strategy. You will get the benefit of the search engine crawlers 'seeing' the content and your site will be properly indexed. Don't worry, you can always alter them later without too much impact. Just don't wait too long. Try to keep the title and subject the same if at all possible.

Whatever your solution just remember that driving traffic early is a great way to make money online sooner rather than later.