"Must-do's" for good ranking

Is there a Top Ten list?

[Charlotte]

I read about title tag, keyword density, backlinks, updated content, adding content, meta-tags, not meta-tags etc etc.
Is there a top ten list of things you MUST DO if you want to get a good ranking and can they be put in any particular order?
Thanks

[kevinpate]

Although it's not limited to 10 items, and some may disagree with its continued validity, but for myself, I still have no significant quibbles with this discussion Brett kicked off a while back.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Charlotte]

Thanks for that.
what does this mean though:
"Don't go with virtual hosting - go with a stand alone ip"?

Is that in relation to having your site hosted on a "shared" site? Can it seriously affect ranking?

[kevinpate]

As I understand it, there is the potential for adverse situations with shared hosting.

Two examples:
Your performance can suffer if the host overloads the server.
If you choose less than well, you may select an outfit that has your site on the same shared ip
as 20 or 200 spammers, potentially causing you to be guilty by association for being in the bad neighborhood.

I've not suffered any negative experiences and I have used shared hosting for a few years. Whether it's because I've managed to chose well, or whether it's pure dumb luck, I dunno.

Caveat: I'm not a pro like most of the folks here, it's more a labor of love and hobby obsession on my part. I do ok by my lil' labor of love info site, but even if it were to fall completely outta the serps, there are other options I can explore for promotion. If this were my bread/butter, I'd probably heed more seriously the concerns of shared hosting.

That being said, I'm fairly certain many commerce based sites manage to exist just fine on shared hosting, though probably not the biggest of the big boys and girls.