SEO Guidelines based on facts

All of the following guidelines are supported by reliable sources detailed on the bibliographic reference. This is a summarized list about what I consider to be the most relevant guidelines to create SEO content for a website.

What is the ideal keyword density of a web page?

How much keywords should a web page have considering the total word count?

There isn't a specific amount of keywords per page. The incremental weight given to a keyword lowers with the amount of repetitions. If the keyword occurs an excessive number of times it’s consider keyword stuffing and search score starts to decrease. ¹

How much content should a page have ?

There isn't an exact number. The idea is “keywords help page ranking and in order to have keywords it needs to have content”. So, there should be enough content to contain the most important keywords but not too much that it seems text is created just to have them (keyword stuffing) and it should tackle a specific subject. Not to much that discourage the user and not to small that has no room for keywords.

Page Guidelines

When building a page these are the most important guidelines ⁵:

1. Create  quality content (clear, helpful, accurate, information-rich,original) while using keywords that clients would search for. (using Google keyword tool is a good idea)
2. Make sure other sites link to the website in a natural way. The links quality (if they have keywords searched by the user in the link itself) and the reputation of the source page meters. (Blogging and social media helps)
3. Structure your website content correctly while making sure at least the following elements have keywords (“the”,”and”,”etc” don't count) :
1. Page title ( 65-75 characters with more important keywords closer to the start
2. URL 
3. Introduction paragraph 
4. Page description (to display on search result, keyword scoring isn't consider, 160 characters approx) ⁴
5. Images aren't crawlable so don't rely on them to deliver keyword content. Images should always have a descriptive "alt" attribute and a suggestive file name.⁴
6. Provide information when linking, instead of "click here" use "more info on consulting services".

Does Google use the “keywords” meta tag?

No.²

Do spelling and grammar matter when evaluating content and site quality?

Indirectly. Although it doesn't impact search index score directly, high search scored websites tend to have well written content. Basically it’s common sense that easy to read and well written content tends to score better because users will link more frequently to it.³

Does translated content cause a  duplicate issue?

No, if they are in different languages and it's a quality translation. On the other hand if it's the same content on the same language (I.e: us.kaizen and uk.kaizen.com) then it might be penalized. 1:1 translation is fine.⁶

How should localization be handled domain wise ?

After top level domains (kaizen.com,kaizen.fr) sub domains are the next best choice⁷

Are Social Shares the Same as Links?¹⁰

In a word, no. Although there is evidence that social shares such as Tweets, Likes, and Plusses affect rankings, at this time links are considered a far superior and more lasting way to promote the popularity of your content than any other method.

Do pdf files rank the same as standard web pages ? ¹¹

Generally no.This is due to the simple fact that usually a pdf file is less likely to be linked to because they require a higher time investment by the user(obviously pdf should be text based and not image based).

Quality content and reliable website linking to it are the most important steps ⁸

^{UK Kaizen Institute Consulting Group was designed with these facts in mind.}

By moz.com

Bibliographic Reference

Matt Cuts is currently the head of Google’s Webspam team and he’s also responsible for developing SafeSearch first version.

Moz is a well known marketing and SEO company with almost a decade

1 - What is the ideal keyword density of a page? Matt Cuts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk4qgQdp2UA)

2 - Does google use the “keywords” meta tag?Matt Cuts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK7IPbnmvVU)

3- Do spelling and grammar matter when evaluating content and site quality? Matt Cuts

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoFf6Kn4K98)

4 - Google one page SEO guide (https://storage. .com/support-kms-prod/SNP_3027140_en_v0)

5 - Google-friendly sites (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/40349?hl=en)

6 - Does translated content cause a duplicate content issue? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDg2AGRGjLQ)

7 - How should I handle localized content? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyWx31GeQWY)

8 - On-Page Ranking Factors - SEO Best Practices - Moz (http://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factors)

9 - Design and Development SEO (http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/basics-of-search-engine-friendly-design-and-development)

10 - Popularity and links (http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links)

11 - What are the best practices for PDF optimization? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzq-94lcWQ