The Canonical URL tag

Yahoo!, Bing & Google all support the "canonical url tag" with the aim to assist webmasters and site owners eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index.
The tag is part of the HTML header on the web page:
<link rel="canonical" href=http://www.yoursite.com/page>

This would tell Yahoo!, Bing & Google that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.yoursite.com/page and that all of the link & content metrics the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL.

Open Directory Project Meta Tags

Sometimes the search engine will display information about your site taken from the Open Directory Project (ODP) instead of your description meta tag. You can force the search engine to ignore the ODP information by including a robots meta tag like this: <meta name="robots" content="noodp">.

The "noodp" robots meta tag is fully supported by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

If your site is listed in the Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! search results will display information about your site taken from their directory instead of the contents of your description meta tag. As above, you can force Yahoo! to ignore the directory information by including this robots meta tag: <meta name="robots" content="noydir">.

The "noydir" robots meta tag is only supported by Yahoo!

Robots metatag

Robots: <meta name="robots" content="index,follow">

Many web pages have this tag wrong. An example of the wrong usage is content="index, follow, all" - wrong because some spiders can't handle spaces between the words in the tag or the word "all". Most engines by default assume that you want a web page to be indexed and links followed, so using the wrong syntax can actually result in the spider coming to the wrong conclusion and penalizing, or worse, ignoring the page outright.

If by chance you do not want your links followed, or the page not indexed, then you would substitute "noindex" and or "nofollow" into the tag. You can also make an inline link no-follow with the following code:
<a href="http://www.site.com/page.html" rel="nofollow">Visit My Page</a>

revisit-after
<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">

rating content
<meta name="rating" content="General">

distribution
<meta name="distribution" content="Global">

classification
<meta name="classification" content="PRIMARY KEYWORD PHRASE">

author
<meta name="author" content="Company Name">

copyright
<meta name="copyright" content="Company Name © 2010">

cache-control
<meta name="cache-control" content="Public">

SEO with different languages - a cultural fit

Who is your audience? If the answer to that is an international audience beyond the borders of the local area of delivery, then don’t forget it, as you need to consider the impact of reaching the masses!

Just by looking at your website tracking stats it should be clear whether you have an international flavour to your site visitors, so by going to ‘their level’ consider localisation factors in the way that international visitors may consider searching on our site.

They don’t watch our TV, they don’t listen to our radio, they don’t read the front page of our newspapers and they say potato when we say potatoe. Use the available language converters to check your main 3-5 keyword/phrases and consider using the results as part of your keyword group.

Language Resources:
http://www.freetranslation.com/
http://www.google.com.au/language_tools?hl=en

Does your domain name (Top Level Domain) say international (.com) or local (.com.au)?

Typographical Errors - Capturing misspelt words in your SEO program

Fremantle or Freemantle? Typographic errors due to rushing or fat fingers on a keyboard, difficult or hard to spell words, or foreigners of different nationalities attempting words that they may have only heard spoken provides an avenue for picking up stray search attempts.

When preparing your list of keywords consider the variations and attempts that people may make. Particularly review your search stats for the website/page after a few months to determine the attempts that have been made and cater for these if you sense a fair proportion of searchers may continue to err.

This is particularly useful in a tightly competed SEO field – where millions of dollars may be spent on obtaining top position for a particular phrase or keyword, you can skirt the outside of the pack and pick up many stragglers attempting to access that phrase but who just didn’t quite get it right.

Keyword Competition Analysis

Analysing your competition is an important step in the search engine optimisation process and it takes into consideration: what keywords your competition has chosen and how they use them on their website.

If you want to see who is your competition for the targeted keywords you've chosen then these tools will assist:

Competition Tool - SEO Digger
http://seodigger.com/

Competition Analysis Tool - Seoscorecard
http://www.seoscorecard.com/

Top Competitor Tool - Webuildpages
http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/top-competitor-tool.php

Keyword Suggestion Resources

Keyword Suggestion Resources:

SEObook:
http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Wordtracker Free Keywords:
http://www.wordtracker.com/

Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google Suggest Tool - shows frequently search for phrases starting with the words and letters in your query:
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-information/

Keyword Discovery - free keyword tool from Trellian:
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html

Microsoft Keyword Forecast - shows predicted Microsoft search impression count and historical trends:
http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Forecast/default.aspx

Keyword Mutation Detection - Detect frequent misspellings or alternative spellings of the same keyword in search query logs:
http://adlab.msn.com/Keyword-Mutation-Detection/

Wordze - nice for generating decently large keyword lists quickly and inserting them into paid search campaigns:
http://www.wordze.com/

Metaspy - see what others are searching for currently
http://www.metaspy.com/info.metac.spy/metaspy/

7search.com keyword suggestion tool
http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

Use KeywordPad to Clean, Modify & Multiply (Long Tail) Your Keyword Lists
http://www.goodkeywords.com/

Keyword Research Tool - Webmaster toolkit
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-research-tool.shtml

Keyword Suggestions Overture - SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-suggestions-overture/

Website Keyword Suggestions - Webconfs
http://www.webconfs.com/website-keyword-suggestions.php

Keyword Suggestion Tool - Self SEO
http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

Keyword Valuation Tools

Google Traffic Estimator - shows the estimated bids prices and ad clicks for the top ranked AdWords ad. Allows you to check for [exact match], "phrase match", or broad match.

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

SEO & Internet Marketing Google Gadget Tools

http://tools.seobook.com/google-gadgets/

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Search engine keyword position tools

When done correctly, search engine positioning can increase web traffic by a tremendous amount. Use these tools to check your current position of your keywords in major search engines like: Google, Yahoo, MSN:

Search Engine Keyword Position - SEO Chat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/search-engine-keyword-position/  

Keyword Analysis Tool - Mcdar
http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp

SERPS Position Checker - LinkVendor
http://www.linkvendor.com/seo-tools/serps-position.html

Website Position Tool - Rnk1
http://www.rnk1.com/

Dictionary Resources:

Using Dictionaries & Thesaurus: Here’s a great starting point for you to consider variations on a theme – use the online Thesaurus to generate associated and similar words to your key focus words.

http://www.lexfn.com/

http://dictionary.reference.com/