First of all, the homepage should have content and a menu. Not just a bunch of links. Content can be an article or couple of them and a menu so visitors can navigate through your website easily. For example in the menu put a link to the homepage, articles page and a sitemap.

A sitemap is a page, where you list the most important pages of your website.

Instead of putting links and other link exchange partners on your website sidebar, you can create a so called linkspage. This will include categories and sub categories, and you put in your link partners in there,so your website is more organized.

The other thing is to buy your own domain when you can.

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Each page of your website needs unique meta tags, the section that needs to be unique is the meta title, description and keywords. Or if your website is BIG at least the most important pages.

But remember, only input your main keywords in the keyword tag. Even though the keyword tag is not very much useful anymore for seo, putting it is better than not.

Pick up say three keywords you want your website to rank in Google first page. The best three that also are not too difficult to get high rankings for, since this if the first time you are doing seo.

Construct also a long description and input just your main keywords there. The important thing is that you do not repeat the same keyword over and over trying to cheat in a certain way.

Proper seo is all about finding the right keywords and then when getting backlinks using those keyword in the anchor text. And I highly recommend you pick just one keyword, that you can easily get it ranked if your website is hosted on a free server.

If you plan to upgrade to a paid hosting account, all the backlinks you have become useless. It will be as if you have a completely new website.

Pick a keyword, which has less than million competitors, if possible.

A keyword with 100 searches a day is good.

The other key is to keep your website organized. A folder or directory for articles, one for partners, one for legal information and so on.

Plus work smart, means check out a good looking website, see how they create meta tags, see how they create menus and a sitemap. Try to make as much as possible like that.

The key after all this is getting as many backlinks as you can.