Here's a checklist of 31 strategies that you can use to improve your search engine ranking. If you follow these strategies before you submit your Web pages to the search engines, you'll have an excellent chance to achieve top rankings. If you need to improve the positions of any page, simply modify your keywords.

1. Enhance Link Popularity

2. Create a Theme

3. Use Title Tags

4. Use Keyword Phrase as Title Tag

5. Avoid Stop Words

6. Use Meta Descriptions

7. Include Meta Keywords

8. Use a 30 Second Meta Refresh

9. Position Navigation Bars after Body Text

10. Remove Unnecessary Tags

11. Use Header Tags

12. Check Your Opening Sentences

13. Watch the Keyword Density

14. Watch the Word Count

15. Name The Page

16. Name Graphics Files with keyword names

17. Use Alt Tags

18. Image Maps and HTML Links

19. Put Keywords in Link Text

20. Register a Keyphrase Domain Name

21. Use  Plural Versions of Keywords 

22. Use Uncommon Keywords

23. Avoid Repetition

24. Stay Close to the Root Domain

25. Name Directories after keywords

26. Move Your Javascript

27. Naming CSS Tags after keywords

28. Include a Site Map

29. Use Robots.txt Files

30. Avoid Tiny Text

31. Beware of Link Farms

To get further details on how to apply these strategies download Search Engine Ranking Strategies. The report is in pdf format.