In her monthly e-newsletter, Jill Whalen of High Rankings [3] always points out some excellent techniques regarding search engine marketing and optimization. She's a 'white knght seo' you can trust. Recenty she revisited her famous 'Ten Tips to The Top'.

When you really think about the following tips, it starts to run deep. Like Zen deep. Some of these are basic; others more involved.

Here's what they boiled down to - my summary:

1) Beware of New Domains - New domains are in Google's sandbox for 9-12 months. This is not BS. It's the perfect time to build content and fine tune content workflows. Realize this fact for new ventures. Yahoo and MSN are much more friendly these days.

2) Feel Your Audience - This helps you write content and copy geared towards them. What they're looking for. Finding you becomes easier.

3) Pay Attention To Info Architecture - How you design and adapt the information and navigational system on your site matters. Try to integrate what people are searching for into your navigational elements/architecture.

4) Pay Attention to Interaction Design - Think of this as a combination of #3 and technical writing. Design your interaction elements (link names, alt tags, link text) with your audience and terms in mind.

5) Make Sure Your Site is Friendly to Spiders - That razzle-dazzle database-driven content probably sucks as far as spidering goes. Human readable URLs, clean directory structures, strong inter-linking are important. Make it easy on the bots...

6) Use Your Title Tags with GREAT Care - These are weighed heavily. Use them with care and creativity. It's not just about jamming them with every keyword and hoping for the best. Description phrases are also important.

7) Publish Good Content That Promotes Links - Everybody has something worthwhile to say. Publish content that offers insight, infor or interest. People will link to you because of it. The more links the better.

8) Don't Be Obsessed with Number 1 - Anywhere on the first page is good. (I actually prefer being 3 or 4). This is where #6 comes in.