Hello, today I am writing a compilation guide of some tried and tested methods of Search Engine Optimization.

Focus your efforts on Google.

Google is what you should optimize for because if you can get on Google then Yahoo, Altivista etc.. will follow.

SEO Pages Not Sites

Remember Google ranks pages not sites so focus in on what each page is about and set: page name, title, heading tags, and key phrases that are reliant to your content. Even if your gather long lists of keywords & phrases you should only optimize each page for 1-2 key phrases.

Page Names

The first thing Google looks at is your page name so random characters won’t rank as well as a title that contains words that describe the page content. Keep page names lowercase and I like to use dashes between words.
NO: /page?3
YES: /design-consulting

Title Tag

The title tag should never be taken lightly. Your title should be (-70 characters). Make sure to use keywords found in the page content itself. Keep the most important key phrases early in the title. I saw a site the other day set up like this and was impressed.
Key Phrases 1 Key Phrases 2 | Company Name
Putting the company name last adds emphases to the keywords and scores better.

Home Description

In the description tag add a short (-140 characters) easily to understand sentence describing your site. Tip: this is not a place to add keywords for the spiders but for people to read after you get added to Google.
Don’t add so many keywords that it looks like a scam site or it will never get clicked on in a Google search.

Home Keywords

What you want to do here is add a short list (6-10) of keywords for Google to know what your site is focused on. Make sure you have these in your content text on the home page or they will not be as effective. Tip: Be careful with how many keywords you use here as too many can degrade your keyword results. Here the focus should be on quality, not quantity.
For more help deciding what keywords are right for you to focus on check out
Google Keyword Generator

H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 Tags

H tags or heading tags carry a very high importance to search engines. You should carefully craft your H1 tag just like your title tag. You should only have one H1 tag to be used like a page title and use H2 for your paragraph block title headers.

Bold Text

Bold key words and phrases when ever possible and search engines will follow suit and add emphasis.

Google XML Sitemap Generator

Site maps make it easier for the search engine to crawl your site. Here is a great one for static sites.
Download Page

Track your progress.

Sign up for a Google Account to gain access to these key SEO tracking tools.
Sign up for Google Ad Words and Use the Keyword Tool to track how many times your key phrases are searched per month and how many other sites might be competing for those phrases.

Google Analytics
Google’s Analytics is an uber powerful tool for tracking how many visitors you have coming to your site how long they stay and where they are coming from. This tool gives you much of the feedback you need to track and tweak your SEO process.

Google Webmasters Tools
A little outdated but still some very useful data and URL crawling tools.
Website Grader This tool saves you lots of guess work and is a free tool for narrowing in on the bulls eye. I highly recommend you run your site through this tool to know how much work is needed.

Inbound Links

Inbound Links are one of the most important key factors in search engine placement.
Sure you want to have a lot of incoming links however you also want good high ranking sites linking to your site. So don’t get in a hurry to have tons of links, again the focus should be on quality, not quantity. Also watch out for link exchanges when two sites link to each other it can kind of cancel out the links effectiveness. Also if your going to post to directory’s make sure it’s at least a little bit of a challenge to get submitted or your probably signing up for a low ranking site that can hurt more than help.

Getting Links From Social Networking Sites

Social media is a wonderful thing and networking sites like Stumbleupon Digg and others are a great source of feed back for your site and help build your search ranking. Add social networking icons to your WordPress theme so others can link back to you can help push your site to new levels of exposure.