6 steps to Successful Site

1. Mastering the basics - figure out where you are today and measure over time to know impact. Keep a list of domains and sub domains you own and what they're doing. If you have other domains that are dupes, your SEO needs to know this. Monitor your log files. Not just analytics. Log files show what is making the request. You want to know what pages the SE's are requesting. You need to know if something is blocking you website from se's.

2. Track your rankings for business critical keywords at major SE's. Collect data from different sources, like Yahoo! Google, MSN. Use tools like Omniture, Wordtracker, etc. Webposition shows rankings. Keep monthly reports for your websites to spot problems earlier.

3.Internal cross linking - most sites have a global top nav and go down to other levels. Breadcrumbs are how you link back up. Go top down and bottom up. Side to side too. Make sure you have all these links. URL structure. Make them text links. Why? Its easy for se's to read URLS of text links. SE's don't execute JavaScript. Some JavaScript has the url in it and the SE may be able to see it. Don't trust it. If a section of your site is not being indexed, it could be the URL structure. Alt attributes don't get much weight for SE's. They are used behind images. SE's can't fill out forms. Forms are great for users, provide another path for SE's.

4. Footer links - recommends using them. Link to the most important pages on your site. Not all partner sites or links pages. Keep it short and simple. Less links equals more weight for each one on the page. Short URLs are less complex and easier to follow. Many levels down is interpreted as not being important on your site. The higher up the link, the most "important" you feel the page is.

5. Http request/response cycle - referring url user agent name, ip address, cookies for domain, more. http response is 3 digit status code (200, 301, 302, 404), html code, location of redirect, cookies or more. Every request is met with a response. Some URLS have moved, for example. There are cookie communications to and from.

200 ok code - all is well and here is your html. Don't put a custom error page with 200 ok code.
301 - permanent moving of page; redirect to appropriate page
302 - temp move
404 - custom error page

6. The circle of death - do not block entire site using robots.txt file. Don't permit a "Disallow://". Don't require anyone to require a cookie to access the site. SE's don't accept cookies. Don't force cookies to see a particular country. Can cause huge problems. Every URL should have unique content.