The WordPress Codex says that “WordPress, straight out of the box, comes ready to embrace search engines“. Well, that may be true … to a certain degree, but there is more than enough work that you’ll need to do after you’ve installed WordPress in order to get it playing nicely with Google (and other search engines).

Nathan Rice has published “The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Theme Search Engine Optimization” which is a list of tips for bloggers that will help them embrace the natural flow of good SEO in the form of a well optimized theme. This guide can’t guarantee you first page rankings, and certainly can’t get you quality links, but it will teach you every step you must take to ensure that you’re site is completely search engine optimized. The post has been divided into the following topics.

• Generating a sitemap for Google
• Getting your site indexed by Google
• Getting Google to index and follow the right stuff
• Using Keyword-Rich Permalinks
• Optimizing your  <title></title>
• Optimizing your header tags
• Using META descriptions
• Using META keywords
• Keyword Density
• Deep Linking

Source: The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Theme Search Engine Optimization