Know that SEO in general is the act of second-guessing several algorithmic black boxes. I'd argue that, besides some fairly simple guidelines, SEO is a bunch of

Know that SEO in general is the act of second-guessing several algorithmic black boxes. I'd argue that, besides some fairly simple guidelines, SEO is a bunch of blind guys in a dark room walking around with short sticks, excitedly blogging when they think they've hit something. I'd second the suggestions of reading through Matt Cutts' blog as well as SEOmoz, but here are some consistently referenced tips that I think are defensible. 1) Robots can't parse your images. Render your text with @font-face, not as a JPG. 2) Make sure your URL, your <title>, and your <h1> and <h2> have keywords that are relevant to the material on the page. 3) Register with Google and Bing's webmaster tools, and make sure the keywords they think your sites are relevant for are reasonable. Use Google Analytics to see what organic keywords are sending you traffic. Measure what you want to improve. 4) Generate original content. 5) Get backlinks. Good linkage from HN/reddit/delicious/twitter/whatever can generate multiple orders of magnitude more traffic than long-tail search traffic.