While we do not center our practice on search engine optimization much of our work results in search marketing efforts whether paid or organic. What follows is an example of some search engine optimization (SEO) best practices which through testing and experience have come to know as reliable heuristics for getting the most visibility for the content on your site. 

Pre-production:

• Discover words users think of in the topic area of your site

On-site:

• Keyword relevant global navigation structure
• Minimize clicks to reach relevant content
• Write effective meta descriptions (note: this does not affect rank, but helps search engines display content about the page or site in their results)
• Keywords targeted are relevant to site’s content
• Targeted keywords are popular searches relevant to client’s business
• Page titles start with targeted keywords
• Use h1 tag for prominent content titles
• Body copy is contextually sufficient and keyword-rich
• Text-links include targeted keywords point to relevant content within the same site
• CSS/HTML design to minimize amount of hypertext market used in displaying page content
• Graphics have descriptive, keyword-rich alternative attributes that are useful for visitors
• INclude a sitemap with text links
• Human-readable, keyword rich URL’s
• Flat directory structure
• Custom error page with site map
• Avoid using popups altogether
• Utilize common UI structures (left or top navigation, body, sidebar, header and footer design).
• Include robots.txt file at root of site with appropriate links to content within site

Off-site:

• List site on public directories
• Encourage in-bound linking from other highly ranked sites for your keywords

Ongoing:

• Measure individual page PageRank monthly
• Add new content frequently to encourage re-indexing

References:

• http://www.clickz.com/3624560 
• http://searchenginewatch.com/3624568
• http://www.pandia.com/features/design.html