• Sum up the content in a series of keywords that appear in the regular text of the page, in the title, in the headings, and in the meta tags for Description and Keywords.
• Make sure that the title still reflects the content of the page.
• In your description, put the gist of your pitch into the first 150 words. (You can ramble on beyond that limit, but you want the first part to communicate to potential users, who see the text in a set of search results.) Only use words that really describe the content of your page.
• In the keywords, include important phrases, but do not repeat the same word over and over. Include misspellings, though, in case the search engines fail to correct someone’s typos. Include lots of synonyms—if someone might use one of those words to locate your page. Only use words that really describe the content of the page.
• Write alternate text for all images, emphasizing keywords.
• Write linktext so that it echoes your main subject.
• Include a description in the page header.

• Make sure the first sentence of your description sums up the page in 150 words or so, because that’s all most search engines will display.
• Add specific keywords from the body to the page header, to show relevance.

• Tell robots that all your content is available (if true).

• Invite spiders back.

Place keywords in the meta information…. Ask users what methods they would use to find a site such as yours, and particularly what keywords they would use to search with. …

Announce your site on relevant news groups and bulletin boards. …

Advertise on major sites. …

Advertise though other media, such as magazines, radio, and television.

—IBM (1999)

The vast majority of queries are one or two words. … The lesson for web designers is the need to use focused and highly descriptive keywords in your META tags, because keyword searches are the way most users will find you.
—Nielsen (1999f)

Just make sure that the keywords that readers are likely to search for are in your title and first few lines of text. Search engines will usually include those lines in their lists of hits. —Kilian (1999)

More than half of Web users rely on search engines to navigate pages.…

List the most important terms in a keywords meta tag with all common synonyms (even ones not included in the body text). Include generic terms used by customers or competing companies to describe the contents of the page….

Use a controlled vocabulary to add keywords to the meta-tags for your pages. …

Only use keywords that describe the main topic of a page.—Sun (2000)

See: Belew (2000), IBM (1999), Kilian (1999), Lloyd-Martin and Whalen (2001), Nielsen (1999f), Sun (2000).