There are a number of steps I always follow when optimizing a site for SEO (note these are just the high points, there are others that I don’t mention here, but these WILL take you a long way):

1) If it’s a new site, I will include the keywords in a non hyphenated domain name (if you can get a .edu or .gov TLD snap it up, otherwise a cheap .info will do just fine)

2) If possible, I will rename the URL to each SEO relevant page to include the main keyword for that page.

3) Set up Google Analytics for the site and ensure the tracking script is added to every page (if not already done).

4) Go through the “money” pages and make sure that the title, meta descriptions and meta keywords tags are unique and optimized for the keywords on the page. In a competitive niche (over 1 million result pages in Google), I would limit the keywords to one main phrase, a couple of local modifiers and one or two more closely related terms per page.

5) Review the non-money pages (i.e. pages you don’t care about from an SEO perspective) and ensure the title and meta description tags are not duplicates of any of the money page tags. Google Webmaster tools will identify this for you once your site has been registered.

6) I nofollow any links to overhead pages from all of the pages on the site with the exception of the home page. I leave the home page links as follow links, since I want the SEs to index all pages on the site and having privacy, contact, disclaimer, etc overhead pages enhance Google’s view of the “trust” for the site. On all other pages I want only the link to the home page to be a follow link, so I can build up the page rank of the home page. I handle this in Dreamweaver by using two different site templates, one for the home page and one for the rest of the pages on the site. If your main keyword page is something other than the home page, modify your approach accordingly.

7) I then optimize each pages content for it’s main keywords, modifiers and related terms. It’s important that each word or phrase used in the keyword META is found somewhere on the page to avoid keyword spam issues.

At this point the on page optimization is complete enough to start with link building. As most folks who’ve been trying SEO already know, link building is tough. I use articles, blog posts, submit forms on relevant sites, reciprocal links, etc. There are ways to short cut this process, without going black or even grey hat. Contact me at Mississauga Search Engine Marketing if interested.