SEO has struck me as something that should be straightforward but seems to be black magic. There's a lot to do, from the URL, to keyword frequency to use of he

SEO has struck me as something that should be straightforward but seems to be black magic. There's a lot to do, from the URL, to keyword frequency to use of header tags to if you should have a unique IP and how long your domain is registered for -- and that's before you even leave your own site. A brilliant hacker can write a useful, scalable app that has little to no internal SEO and get fewer visitors as a result. Then there's all the little games people play to get links: begging for them, paying for them, press releases, "do follow" comments on blogs, and the dreaded DMOZ. It's a drain on a small company that probably just wants to build a better application.