This is a general guide. It's is not a professional opinnion, so please don't criticize! META TAGS - Get 'em There's a bunch of ways to optimize your website, just don't overdo it. First you can add a few keywords & a small description to your meta tags. Keeping all valid The next thing you can do is make sure your whole website is Valid XHTML, CSS, whatever other code you have. It helps the search engines such as Google, or Yahoo pick up certain works on your website as well as index it. Try not using images for header titles. Use the H1, H2, & H3 HTML tags. Make full use of HTML. Example: paragraph tag < p > < /p > Filenames and Mod Rewrite The next thing is your filenames. If your using an CMS (Content Management System) try adding or using Mod Rewrite. It can be very simple if you know what your doing, otherwise you can use various tools located around the internet to generate it. It will go into an .htaccess file. We will get more into this in another article. Promotion and Advertising This really isn't a SEO method or anything, but it can help you and your website benefit with your traffic. Make sure your website has an affiliate area, so you can affiliate with other websites. If you don't know what I mean by affiliate, then I'll explain. Also if you want to get into it, you can pay to advertise your website. There's just a few tips to improve your SEO ranking. Edit: Also a good idea is to do some keyword research. - Thanks rcj662
You should include keyword research because you need to get listed for some good keywords or you will not get any traffic.
Meta tags are useless really. Well.. keywords are. Descriptions are helpful cos Google will use your description (if a better snippet can't be found) so if you write it for people (include text that will make themwant to click your link in the serps) it can have a great effect. (title tags and incoming links (and their anchor text) play a huge role, too)
Meta Tags are next to useless. Meta Description can show as the description to the link in the SERPs. Validating your site is good advice. Keeping it W3C compliant may make the site more search engine friendly. Mod Rewrites are not really needed. Search engines are not have problems indexing and ranking long urls. Affiliate programs are always good for extra exposure on the internet. I recommend you check out the last link in my signature for some of my own SEO tips.