But I’d still advise clients to worry more about, and invest more in, generating new, relevant content, perhaps even starting a blog (Google loves sites with blogs), and generally to put time and energy into building value for their audience. There’s an obvious place for SEO in any business mix, but a strategy based on providing value will outperform nerdy link tricks every time.

Of course, the more educated clients can become about the real world limits of SEO, the better they can direct their own strategy.

I would, however, argue that SEO is more complex than you make it out to be. The list you provide is a basic checklist, but there are dozens and dozens of other minor and major tweaks you can make to a site for a more complete optimization. Do some of those things appear to be frustrating or useless minutiae? Sure. But consider this – what if you implement all of the basic methods you mention above and so do all of your competitors? Theoretically, you are all on even ground and it’s a zero-sum experience all around. But if you start restructuring your URLs to make them keyword rich and implement a sensible cross linking strategy within your site (and your competitors make no changes), your site will eventually rank higher.

The point is, the basics are a great place to start, but depending on how competitive your market is, you’ll need to do a hell of a lot more.

http://powazek.com/posts/2090

“The problem with SEO is that the good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work, and it’s poisoning the web. Search Engine Optimization is not a legitimate form of marketing. It should not be undertaken by people with brains or souls. If someone charges you for SEO, you have been conned.”

Also, Google is ESPECIALLY interested in who is linking to you so you should do everything you can to get other trusted relevant sites to link back (preferably without you having to provide a link to their site).