SEO Basics
Before you begin serious SEO you must ensure that your website is "search engine friendly". This means making sure that each individual page is compliant with search engine standards and ready to be indexed correctly. Follow each of the steps below for each page on your site.
Have your list of target keywords ready - you'll need to insert them into your pages.
Page Title
The title of the HTML page should be relatively short and describe the page content accurately. Wherever possible, try to include keywords (without distorting the true purpose of the title).
Metatags
Use the description and keywords metatags in the head of each web page. Make these tags different on each web page.
Heading Tags
Use heading tags. Many search engines place more emphasis on text within heading tags, so make sure they use keywords. Use one h1 tag per page with the most important keywords. Use other head tags (h2, h3, etc) to provide variations and support the main heading.
Page Text
Make sure the text of your web pages contain keywords and common phrases which people might search for. Be careful with the frequency of your keywords - you want to have them occur at least a few times if possible, but don't repeat yourself so much that the copy becomes unnatural. The idea is to discretely spread keywords around without making it obvious.
Remember that text contained within images won't be picked up by search engines. Only actual text on the page will be indexed.