These 12 steps are based on Google’s advice to small business owners with websites they may not have time to invest in with SEO research but who want to make sure they don’t get penalized and make sure they do benefit from organic SEO.
301 permanent redirects
Use 301 permanent redirects to avoid pages appearing as duplicate content including with and without www. and with or without a / at the end of a URL. Duplicate content will be penalized in results, you should focus any link building at one URL ideally too.
Use Google Webmaster tools, validate and sign up for e-mail forwarding
Yes Google would want you to do this but it really is invaluable as once you set up Google webmaster tools and prove you own your site you can get a lot of information, not least alerts when Google find problems with your site; sign up for e-mail forwarding to get any alerts sent through directly.