Bound to be more than this, but here are some points I strive for:

- Make sure your theme presents the page in a way that search engines can understand and identify the important text on the page (internally, some themes are very badly organised).

- Well structured html without broken tags.

- Hit all the important words and phrases, but don't make it spammy.

- Have lots of content on lots of pages that all link between each other.

- Install Google analytics

- Have content that encourages users to spend time on the site and return often.

- Encourage users to click between pages (must balance with usability), and also to spend time on each page.

- Regular updates and changes to content, particularly on entry page.

- Keep your metadata, titles, headings and text consistent with each other and with the url (=pretty urls). ( I developed Magic Heading to automate this http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/magic-heading/... )

- Make sure internal and external links work and are not broken.

- Up-to-date sitemap.

- Don't hide important content within JavaScript or ajax. If you do, provide direct access for the search engines to see.

Here are a few starting areas:
1. Meta Tags per page. Advantages/Disadvantages
Google Cares about: Title Tag, Description Tag, H1/H2 Tags and to an extent the first paragraph. I always have a unique title, and the site name is the last part of the title.

2. Pretty URLs Advantages/Disadvantages
Nothing wrong with pretty urls. C5's non pretty urls are actually not bad as they still have description in them.. it's not like: site.com/node.php?123456 ... that would not be good. Some would argue the extension of .php / .htm should be in there, but Google knows better now.

3. Key Words Advantages/Disadvantages
Not a bad idea, some smaller search engines still use them, but I spend the least amount of time here.

4. Best Practices
Have a good short title. Descriptive and unique to the page. It's what people see in a search result, so don't include the company name at the beginning if your not well known, what's the point? Tell them what they'll see instead.

Only have one h1 tag, and it should be a good one, what the page is all about. Have multiple h2 tags for each sub-area of the page.

Load quickly. If you find you are loading slowly because of your server or extensive graphics / 3rd party sites pulling in data, not only will your bounce rate go up, but you're going to see google penalize you.

Navigation should be clean. It's not a bad idea to duplicate it at the footer. Google seems to see that consistent nav and index those pages rather quickly. Use unordered lists for your nav. Make sure it's still usable without JavaScript running.

Alt tags on images - make sure they have them... you'd be amazed also at how much traffic comes in from google image searches! (and it's a great way to add some keywords)

Keywords on page - 5 - 10% of your content should be using the keyword / keyword phrase that the page is about. Anything more than 10% Google starts seeing it as keyword stuffing and you may get penalized for that.

Content - Original, quality content is how you get ranked. copy content and you may get the site removed from the index, or at the least, it will not even be counted. Don't copy / paste.

I found that concrete5 can be great or horrible with SEO simply based on how you build it. The theme really is the key...

Build it right, put in good content, and you should be fine.

Great post . I can’t count the number of times I’ve told people that I do website and they confuse it with SEO. A challenge in this industry is to growing the term optimization outside of SEO. I do have one thing issue, there are dirty tricks to raise conversion rates that people who aren’t careful can fall for . An easy example, is offering something you can’t provide or being deceitful in any other way. This is especially dangerous if you aren’t tracking the true KPI (say using click through rather than a full conversion.) This is one reason why performance guarantees with website optimization can’t really guarantee you anything. Lastly, I would add that one reason to start website optimization vs. SEO is that its a huge competitive advantage now since very few players are testing their pages. Keep up the good work promoting optimization!

I wrote a blog post a little while ago summarising (or at least attempting to) the major considerations in SEO. I often refer clients to it.

http://www.mesuva.com.au/blog/technical-notes/there-is-no-secret-re...

Most comments above are credible, but I tend to use the 'Spock' approach.

Logic and common sense are the way to go.

Logic dictates and also helps with 'accessibility', try to make 'title', 'description', 'keywords' and the 'h1' tag match (this is the secret) and nest 'h' tags in the right order.

Please don't worry to much about 'backlinks'!

C5 is great for 'SEO' if used as it should be, 'logically'.

I disagree with a 'The theme really is the key' and I've never found C5 'horrible' for SEO.

Balance, beauty and logic...

...it's a CMS jim, but not as we know it!

'Live long and prosper'

lol... now this is going to be on next weeks totally random.

Spock tips:-

1. Meta Tags per page. Advantages/Disadvantages

For- Character set, Title (not strictly meta, but I think important), Description, Keywords

Against - Author, Abstract, Cashe Control, Classification, Copyright, Distribution, Generator, Expiration, Revisit, etc.

2. Pretty URLs Advantages/Disadvantages

For - Chronological, pretty, look nice

Against - None


3. Key Words Advantages/Disadvantages

For - Important, goes with title, h1 tag and bits in content

Against - DON'T OVER DO IT!

4. Best Practices

Which bit do you mean?

Pros - Again I'll guess at title, description, keywords and content. Remember to have a good design, layout, navigation and consistency.

Cons - Get it wrong and your dead in the water or drown in the 'seop'

Above all, beware of Romulans bearing gifts...

It is very important to make your website title and description metatags perfectly and use targeted keywords in the very start. Your website page title should not exceed more than 65 characters and description should be in a limit of 155 characters.