The title is a little misleading as the aim of this guide to make your website more accessible to users, the fact it is better for search engines is a bonus!
Most of these tips are based on the improvements this site has seen over the years. Some of the tips may not apply but hopefully you find something useful here.
These tips are suggested on the basis that the more descriptive and clearer you are, the easier it will be for the search engine and user to understand your content.
Header tags show where new content starts and its importance in the overall document. Styling a block of text to look like a heading does not convey this.
Descriptive paragraphs that contain more information are better than a vague single line of text.
Treat every page as the first page the reader sees. Breadcrumb links give an easy way for the reader to go back from the page they landed on and find similar content.
A link that reads 'download now' does not tell the search engine or user what you are offering without understanding the rest of the page whereas 'download my application' gives a little more information.
Although image recognition is improving, good image alt tags can help your image get indexed more accurately and will help visually impaired readers. If you have a picture of a tree on your site, an alt tag of 'photo' does not help anyone whereas 'photo of an oak tree in Autumn' helps both the search engine and readers.
A good meta 'description' that clearly describes the page is a good thing to have and may appear on the search engine listing. Meta 'keywords' are useful too but only too a point, ideally the search engine should be able to correctly index and categorise the page based on its content. Google no longer uses the 'keywords' tag anyway...
Search engines and readers like fast websites. Make sure images and JavaScript are optimised to improve download speeds. Click the following link to find out how to make your website faster.
A page which lists all the important areas on your site gives search bots and readers an easy way to know where to look for content.
This has been an ongoing task with this site, most content on the web is read on small phone screens. With Firefox's 'Responsive Design Mode' view, you can see how your website looks on a variety of different screen sizes.