Graham bemethavinci
SEO Is your responsibility not ours
Its more a case of what NOT to do
You cannot force google or any other search engine to move you up in the rankings
and attempts often have the reverse effect

Many sites are their own worst enemies when it comes to SEO
99% of meta tags are junk hang ons from last century and are totally ignored by modern search engines
or they are proprietary ones and nothing to do with actual SEO
and some may even be harmful
all you really need are meta description and the page title (plus the automatic canonical and rss links for the blog)
they must truly reflect the actual content or they will be ignored
Don't have the same description meta or title on all your pages
Don't over stuff your description or title (search engines will probably ignore them or even mark you down for this)
the rest of your search engine listings will come from your actual content

Don't have malicious or untrusted files in your downloads
Don't have code that attempts to manipulate social media (google calls this social engineering and will mark you down or even de-list you for it)
Don't have pointless javascript effects (all the 'rain' and silly things running around the screen)
Don't have badly mangled or outdated html
Don't ram your site full of advertising or ads with fake links from disreputable agencies
these can really harm your SEO if the search engines class them as malicious or misleading

The rest is down to Good original Content that attracts visitors and keeps them coming back
and your ability to promote your site