Just about anyone can build some kind of website, that said getting to the the top of the major search engines for a competitive term, well, that really is another story altogether. To succeed you need to be dedicated, patient and to understand it will be a long painful road. My own thoughts are, if you have a sound understanding on the fundamentals of SEO and are willing to work harder than anyone else, you will succeed.
An SEO campaign can take an extended period of time to work, sometimes up to a year, the common tactic in the interim is to use a Pay Per Click programme, Google’s Adwords is the most popular. Be warned PPC can burn a hole in your wallet, far quicker than your wife’s trip to the shops.
People who do well in the world of Internet marketing appear to be the systematic type, people with a fine eye for detail who are not compelled to follow the herd.
Go into any forum on the subject of SEO and you will see the most common topic is based around page ranking, with very few people debating the issue of keyword research. I guess this shows today’s trend of building and marketing a website to simply sell advertising space. I guess the youth of today are drawn to the Internet in the same way the prospectors were drawn to San Francisco some hundred years ago.