SEO for websites

We've been talking a lot about SEO at work and I thought I'd throw up some tips for everyone out there on some key points for SEO. SEO is a lot of luck and constant tuning. Here are some initial steps to focus on for the initial setup.

1. Make a list of competitors and keywords that you want to go after.
   
2. Set a realistic goal for position on first page

Once you have an idea of the keywords and competitors that you want to go after do the following:

1. Make sure all of your images have alt tags that incorporate your keywords somehow, but are still relavent to your content
2. Make sure that the title for your site is comprehensive of what you offer and don't be afraid to add a summary with keywords
3. Add meta keywords in the header of your website
4. Make sure your content is relavent and links to high value content within and outside of your website
5. Make sure you comply with Google's sitemap requirements and submit your sitemap to google to be crawled
6. Blog, Blog, Blog - Link a blog to your site and do constant posts that link back to your main site to drive more traffic to your site and to build contextual relavence
   
7. Setup alerts for your keyword content online and be prevalent in forums and other communities
   
8. Setup external profiles that reference your site within communities that are related to your keywords and industry
9. Keep your content up to date - Make sure there aren't dead links, pics up to date, and refresh the content to be relavent with the dynamics of your keywords

The biggest thing to focus on is that SEO isn't about ranking higher in search but instead getting more people to visit your site, so make sure when they get to your site that there is actually something worth seeing.