SEOmoz has a great list of 24 Checkups for Clueless Developers/Marketers. As it turns out, this is essentially a how-to guide to get started in the SEO process for your business site.
Each of these points are very pertinent - and I wanted to list my favorites, and add a little extra to each of those:
5. Double check your code to make sure you’ve got your content titles and subtitles under H1 / H2 tags.
This is one tactic you don’t see nearly enough of. As a general rule, I like to use H1/H2 tags wherever possible. It really helps in telling the search engines what the gist of the content below it is, and also organizes the content for your users. Hot Tip - Make your first H1 Tag match up with your Title tag if possible.
7. Make sure contextual links are widely spread and commonly used all across the website content to emphasize key pages.
Despite the fact you already have great site-wide navigation (making it easy for your users to get around), breadcrumbs (making it even easier) - you cannot forget to link to key pages on your site from within the content itself! This give you the opportunity to use specific anchor text (and different versions of anchor text) within your site. This will also help in the overall crawlability of the site.
13. Ensure that your 404 page contains links to your main categories and maybe a search box.
Whenever I suggest setting up a default 404 page with content on it, instead of the usual error message, clients never fail to smack their foreheads with a big “Why didn’t I think of that?” It’s easy to do, so there’s really no excuse. It can help users who go astray, as well as help alleviate the pain of broken links in the SERPS and from inbound links. If nothing else, default the error page to your sitemap.
You do have a sitemap, right?
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