I’m a freelance website developer and was just curious how the other “webbies” on Sheffield Forum like to optimise their site(s)? Is there any routine you follow? Any particular way you go about building links or if you have never heard of SEO.

Just curious to see how people go about it :P

Web CEO or iBusiness Promoter.
First free, second most definitely not......

What do mean by optimising? Better code, Appearance, interactivity, key words tag? What criteria are you following here?

In terms of Search Engine Optimisation and just general optimisation through valid code, content, etc.

Just curious how people go about changing their sites to get more visitors or give their current ones a better experience.

First step, build it right in the first place...i.e. valid code, semantic markup, separation of presentation from the code (i.e. correct use of CSS). Any JS functionality should work without it, build the functionality first then add the toys on afterwards for those that have them.

Writing your content properly is also good to do, most site assume it's the same as writing for a magazine or print but it's not quite the same. Sites like A List Apart have lots of useful articles on this type of stuff :)

Check your code at:

http://validator.w3.org/

and see how many errors you get

Check your code at:

http://validator.w3.org/

and see how many errors you get

May want to check yours as well :)

I think making a site that people actually like to use is key, the rest is an added bonus!

if your validating, you may as well go the whole hog: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tools/