A few weeks ago, the Utah Fund of Funds presented one of their quarterly entrepreneurial mentoring meetings. They invited Todd Jensen of TKonline Solutions  to present.  Todd did a great job of discussing the current state of SEO marketing.   A couple of highlights that I didn't know (for those of you who aren't already SEO pros)

Natural Search:

• Give Google the Goods (text, content, not flash and graphics)
  • THINK LINKBAIT (Something others would want to link to)
• Googles Page Rank (tm) is still the biggest part of the ranking algorithm - this is your "online reputation"
• This includes: 
  • On page factors such as content, Clean code (so they don't get lost - and database driven sites often lose Google)
  • Blogging is a great way to get new content onto your site - every new post is a new page for Google to index!

Off page factors:  Every link to your site is a "vote" for your site.

• All links are not created equal
• Bigger name institutions get more weight
  •     .edu
  •     .gov
  •     .org

(I suppose they believe these guys are not commercial or self- interested, but it interesting how Google is thinking

• A one way link counts more than a reciprocal link
• A press release is a way getting quality links
• Link swaps don't really give you credit
• LSI - Latest Semantic Indexing
•    The Context of your Content Matters!
• Spiders can "now" look at PDF's - but it's new
• If you can highlight the text with your cursor, it can be indexed

Google Analytics is a good, free, way to track who's coming to your site
Todd's favorite resource for SEO info is SEOMOZ.org