Most important in-site features

Is there any good list of the most important in-site features for SEO?

Besides keyword density, what are the most important features that need to be adjusted?

We maintain a software for optimized site generation, and we always try to incorporate new things into it.

Thanks...

Forget keyword density. That's a red herring.

Your <title> tag is the biggest on page factor followed <h>eading tags and internal <a>nchor text.

The title tag and description tag are perhaps the most important...
The title tag is valued while the description tag is not however if you fail to write an accurate or appealing description and title you will never get the click-throughs you could have gotten.

The second most important factor is what the user gets when they get to the site, unique content & tools. Write lots of articles on subjects related to your site, articles which not many other sites deal with yet which are in demand.

And of course navigation is a huge factor both for Google and users. If the users can't find what they want easily they will likely leave... if google can't find a page it will likely not get indexed. Try and keep all your pages static, mod rewrite dynamic pages to static html urls.

These are the most important on-site details, then build lots of links to the site.

I would disagree about the meta description tag for two reasons:

1) The fact that it is not a factor in the ranking algorithm means it automatically has much less value then anything that is a factor.

2) It is only shown in the SERPs when Google cannot find a description from DMOZ or a suitable snippet from your webpage. This means it is shown less often then not in the SERPs so its value is very limited.

I agree with you on many of the above concepts, but I still think that there has to be some validity to the standard html meta tags. One of the most effective ways to get listed highly is to have longevity paired with evolution of site content and beneficial inbound links, but I think it will also help to have supporting content to parallel your title tags h tags and anchors.

I just dont think that it is responsible to assume that nothing else bears any weight to the overall effectiveness of SEO on the page.

I think other factors include having a reliable list of navigation and the ability for the index to link to many of the other supporting pages. Basically, dont have a lot of dead ends link-wise, and also, make sure that spiders will follow navigation to as many pages as possible straight from the index.

Also, with google image search becoming more and more popular, adding alt tags to the images will give image search the possibility to bring in visitors. Especially if your site is an graphic based site.

Overall, there are lists and lists of important features, but you have to give all of them time. There are some short cuts to getting listed high in a hurry, but from what I have experienced, search engines go through cycles of where they may list you and your site traffic will vary from time to time as well.

Agree with the above. Title and internal a href tags are the most important. Page length and content is also important. You can destroy a good page if it contains too many keywords. Google also seems to penalise pages with mispellings (in my experience). Probably an attempt to avoid people creating entry pages.

agree with all members but i want to say that dont use automated tools for optimization. it will be better to go for manual optimization.

What's bad about using seo software? i think it could greatly save your time.

They don't really do much of anything. Their tools usually offer inaccurate advice. The only thing they automate is reporting and submission. The reporting is nice but the submission is useless.

You should have a clean code which is W3c compliant, This is a not a must but its always good to have a accurate code.

* Title - Containing keywords and enticing to attract clicks, containing 65 chars max (including spaces)

* META Description - Can ignore it if you have ample amount of text on your pages

* Headers - Proper header hierarchy or <H1>, <H2>, <H3> and so on...

* Content - Informative and grammatically correct content. No need to concentrate on keyword density as it is a thing of the past. Naturally written content will automatically have your keyword mentioned a couple of times in it, no need to go overboard with that.

* Navigation - Clear HTML navigation using targeted keywords as the anchor texts.

* ALT Tags - Appropriate, relevant and short ALT Text for images on your sites.

umm...well I guess that's it...if I've missed something, the experts here can surely add it to the list