Keeping current with SEO has always been a challenge for me, it reminds me of paying bills, you have to do it but you don’t always want to. However, as the majority of our traffic comes from search, staying on top of it is important and as a result we’ve seen massive traffic growth to old pages that we’ve optimized.
For the most part SEO is a simple equation of inbound links, keyword density, proper HTML, and URL structure. Do these SEO practices well and ethically (what they call white hat) long enough with a great web product that users like and you’ll rank well, period.
Where it gets tricky is keeping current with subtle changes such as moving URLs via 301 redirect (which you should probably hold off on until Big Daddy settles in), the importance of contextual relevance in inbound links, using a long lived domain name over a new domain, etc…
A while back I discovered the SEO Rockstars podcast and as a result now I spend much less time each month having to piece together blogs, webmasterworld, searchenginewatch, etc… However, if you’ve ever had any doubt as to whether SEO belongs in the sales/marketing department of a company, the intro theme song says it all… “jammin and spammin”… uh… the 80’s called and they want their Def Leppard tune back. Seriously though, Greg “Webguerrilla” Boser and Todd “Oilman” Friesen really know their stuff and if you too have to stay on top of SEO then I’d recommend subscribing to their podcast!
SEO is very important to me now but one thing people mustn’t forget is to SEO to much, if you go to far, you are just going to end up putting off normal visitors..