Rumblepup: You know I like you and generally even agree with you on many things, but the first post that started this topic stated "was hoping to find out what on page
SEO factors people here feel are most important. Below is a list of the factors I thought of."
That post does not read like "Here is a list of things a general webpage should have", but a list of "factors" she thought were important in on-page
SEO.
That said, the factors below from her list are all I, and most people here I would think, would consider having anything to do with on-page
SEO:
Title Attribute (I am assuming here that she means title element not attribute)
Meta Description (as far as I know from all testing, only yahoo uses this and only as a small part of ranking considerations)
H1 Tag
Navigation (combined the various types she mentioned)
CSS For Page Layout (some will say this matters, I do not, but i will include it as some think so)
Page Structure (if she means keyword placement/positioning, then yes, if she means visual structure, no)
Internal Linking
Alt Attributes for Images (only when the image is linked, or optimizing for image search)
Title Tags for Text Links (no value anymore, used to work for keyword stuffing)
Sitemap HTML
Sitemap XML
The rest of that long list has no
SEO value in the least, IMO.
Valid HTML? Let me ask you this: In many cases having no meta description tag and allowing the engines to only use a snippet they create from actual page text gives a searcher a better idea it is what he wants and thus brings more clicks from engines.
However, having no meta description tag breaks validity tests, does it not?