SEO recommendations - where to start?

Help!

[rfung]

I've taken a side project assisting a website with some basic SEO. I'm not actually doing any of the changes, but writing them up to be forwarded to the IT team for implementation.

I'm familiar with the basics of SEO, but I'm a bit at a loss as to where to grab the project from. Should I start from the home page, and do basic meta tag changes, titles and urls? The site potentially has hundreds of pages (I haven't had the chance to map it all out yet), and it seems like it would be quite a huge undertaking trying to go the extra mile and go over each page and trying to optimize them for the above mentioned items plus on page keywords.

Help?

[vincevincevince]

This is my 'to do' list for on-site SEO, with the highest priority items first:

Linking - check every page is properly linked from the rest of the site (direct A HREF type links), and with a logical and path from the homepage

Titles and headings - ensure each page has a <title> and <h1> tag which are both unique and reflect the page content

Page themes - cutting pages which tackle more than one topic into two pages and optimising individually, likewise, combining multiple short pages on the same topic into one page

Sitemap using the new XML format

Identifying key search terms and then mapping all related terms using the ~ operator, and ensuring that all such terms are represented

Then (only then) would I go through pages one by one, improving keyword presence and focus

The following have negative priority and I never do them:

Meta keyword tags (unless they are there, in which case I delete them on sight)

Keyword density for one or two word phrases (good results now need a broader base than just one key term)

[boomtown123]

Thanks vincevincevince. I'm an SEO newbie and I really appreciate lists like this.

Would you mind elaborating on your statement about "improving keyword presence and focus"? In Brett's awesome "Successful Site in 12 months through Google alone" guide he mentions in step F:

"Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it). Use good sentences and speel check it ;-)"

Is this what you mean?

[vincevincevince]

Not what I mean, but close. The game has moved on since that excellent post. Your focus now needs to be a bit broader. If you are targetting 'widget' then you need to be using all the terms that should be used when discussing 'widget', not just focusing on that keyword.

[pizzaguy]

"Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it). Use good sentences and speel check it ;-)"

And get the -950 penalty from Google :))

I believe there is no more Seo, just create pages for your visitors and follow Google Webmaster Guidelines.