Follow basic guidelines and you'll be ok.

  1. Images must have the keyword in file name, title and alt tag
  2. Content must be original
  3. No point in using the keywords field
  4. DO NOT spam, keywords should make up less than 2% of the total word count
  5. Use LSI keywords within the content
  6. One H1 tag per page
  7. As many H2 or H3 tags you need
  8. Fast loading website
  9. Fast hosting
  10. Use a Content Delivery Network
  11. Don't target high competition keywords
  12. Text must make up the vast majority of the page (minimum 400 words per page but go for around 800)
  13. No duplicate keywords
  14. No duplicate content on other pages
  15. Internal linking only to highly ranked pages (look at your analytics)
  16. At least one outgoing link to a high PR page
  17. Get an SSL certificate


If you want to rank locally then you are ok with this. I've had xara created websites rank #1 for low to medium competition keywords just by following these simple rules. BTW when it comes to speed, a static website like the ones xara creates will always be faster than a CMS as there is no dynamic content to load.