Forum Moderators: mack
Your question is staggeringly understated. You might as well have asked "Can you tell me everything I need to do to build a houseboat?"
Do some initial research by googling "SEO", and you'll quickly learn 20 things you should and shouldn't do. Lurk around here a few weeks, and you'll overhear 20 more tips. Build a few sites and join in the right conversations, you'll figure out 50 more. Stay in this business for 4-5 years and what you know will overflow volumes. A comprehensive SEO manual is impossible, because SEO is nailing a moving target.
I'll give you one to start. Do you use <title> tags?
good luck & best wishes; you're starting a long journey
you start with a frame, right?
Acquire house and boatframe
Raise house
Slip boat frame underneath house
lower house and secure to boat frame
Acquire large trailer
Attach trailer to even larger truck
Slowly slip trailer underneath houseboat
lower houseboat onto trailer
drive to lake
unload houseboat
enjoy
.oO(if only seo were this simple)Oo.
Seriously, though, search Google for "seo 101" and you'll find a lot of good info.
My own advice:
Ignore SEO, and just build a great site. If you build a great site, you'll naturally rank well. If you don't rank well, you probably don't *deserve* to rank well.
Read, listen, learn - wash, rinse, repeat. Spend an hour a day reading around here and you'll get up to speed. You can start with the basic principles [webmasterworld.com] of building a good, SE friendly site. It's old advice, but still the best primer around.
And don't private message me for it, because that would be cheating, and I don't care to answer a bunch of PM's anyway.
But in summary, I firmly believe what I already said: You can have great rankings without specifically thinking about rankings, just by building a great site full of content and meaningful <TITLE></TITLE> tags. The forum thread mentioned above, which is focused on building content, is as valid today as ever.
