1) Content rules: The information on a web site is its content. More interesting and useful the information is, higher are the chances of its success. Your website content is your identity on the web. That is what attracts visitors as well as search engines attention. The quality and quantity of content that you have showcased on your web pages is directly proportional to the number of visitors you get from search engines.

2) Title and description: Title and description snippets are shown in the serps so it's very important to pay special attention to these tags. This has to summarize what services you offer and why shall people choose you over others. Keyword tag is also helpful in many search engines.

3) Targeted keywords in the content, in the right proportion and in the right places: If you know what your customers are looking for, half the battle is already won. A detailed and thorough keyword research is a must. Once you have found your magic keywords, put in relevant content on your web pages with permissible keyword density.

4) Relevant links/referrals from other web sites: Back-links are considered like votes in your favor from other web sites on the web. There are various kinds of links which can be achieved on the web. One way link from similar category websites are valued the most. However quality matters more than quantity here.

5) Error free code: Search engines say that they do not want poorly designed and coded sites, though there are hardly sites that are banned because of messy code or ugly images but when the design and/or coding of a site is poor, the site might not be index able at all, so in this sense poor code and design can harm you a lot.

6) HTML and XML Sitemap: Sitemaps are a way of guiding visitors as well as search engines about the link structure and layout of your web site. HTML sitemap impacts the customer behavior and prolongs visitors stay on the website while XML sitemaps help deep down indexing as well as let search engines know the relative importance of your web pages.

7) Easy navigation for good link structure: Visitors are more likely to spend more time on a web site with good navigation structure.

8) Updated content: Search engines like new and updated content. To that end you must have a means of publishing fresh content on your website. Blogging has got so much popularity among online business professionals, only for the same reason.

9) URLs structure and Anchor text: URLs has to be descriptive, for all pages of the web site. Visitor shall be able to tell where they are at your web site by looking at the URL. Avoid unnecessary parameters and non standard characters in URL. Using keywords as internal anchors is another important aspect.

10) Image naming and Alt tag: As the search engines cannot read images, you must tell the search engines what an image is about. That can be done using the ALT tag. Also it helps to keep file names meaningful and descriptive.