SEO checklist needed before starting development on new site.

[hulahoop]

I will be starting development on my new site soon and need some help with areas I'll need to cover to ensure my site is as favourable as possible to search engines as possible. Apprecite if anyone can help provide a checklist of what I'll need to do (eg. w3 compliance, canonical redirect, keywords, anything to look out for in the css area?, etc),

[ogletree]

1. Make sure all pages load with a 200 code. I see lots of sites that load every page with a 302 code for some reason.

2. Plan out your internal link structure before you make pages. Just plan the whole site. Before you work on design create the site in plain html.

3. Work out page naming rules and stick to them.

4. Try to keep page size below 100k smaller if you can

5. Get a home page up as fast as you can to start the age of your site. Make it a real page and then get started on links. At least start submitting to directories.