Best SEO practices

OK, so I'm rather new here and have a few questions.

I've already setup sitemaps, meta tags, permalinks (pretty urls), and such for my sites.

Are there any other basic SEO practices I can put into place before I start going after backlinks?

 

of course you have to include your text context...and your targeted keywords..

 

be sure to follow W3C web standards when writing your markup and always validate your code.

Use header and paragraph tags appropriately.

 

Personalize every page you create so that Google is clear on what keywords a particlular page targets

 

Thanks for the advice.

I'm going through some of my non-dynamic pages and updating some things to follow suit.

I've also added a backlink plugin to my wordpress sites. Anyone ever use it?

 

if you have completed on site seo, it's time to focus on the backlinks building for your web sites

 

right content and bold the important word of your content that are used as a key word be sure to check the density and prominence of your keyword

 

Never stop with building one way backlinks. The best scenario is to get them from websites that are related to subject of your website...never enough of one way backlinks!

 

put your targeted Keywords on the title and descriptions, also use htags, build links with related sites. post on forums and have patience...

 

Yeah, read the Search Engine Optimization FAQ over at SitePoint.com (FREEBIE, no registration required). The SEO link in my signature wouldn't hurt either (it goes to a thread on this forum).

 

Create quality content, good KW placement (title,header,anchor text, etc.), avoid too much reciprocal links and OBL

 

Yes, you can have this in directory. Join forums and put your sig.

 

I am in the same boat as you in terms of being new to SEO.

One of the web sites that I have found to be a great resource to beginners like us is SEOmoz dot com (I can't post web site links yet because I'm new to the forums).

 

Does anyone know if Google rewards those sites that validate? I just spent a lot of time on a couple of my sites today making them valid and hope that it will pay off.
Thanks!

 

No, Google will not "reward" sites that validate their code - all it cares about is relevant content. They are not HTML grammar nazis or police (THANK GOD). But valid code will help ensure that your site's design will not break with the next browser update, and if coded properly (using clean, minimal, semantic and valid markup) can even make the site more accessible and far easier to use than it would be otherwise.