However, Google does continue to refine methods to filter out black-hat SEO techniques (SPAM / Abuse).

So, basically short of an apocalyptic event, SEO will still be around for a foreseeable future.

Good Luck!

Thanks, TheWriter

The most important factors as to my knowledge are your page

titles
meta description
meta keywords
internal linking
keywords density
usage of latent symentic indexing
sitemaps
robots.txt
alt tags for images

This along with strong offsite seo should help you rank very well in the search engines.

hope this helps

To be the best, learn from the best. SEO books and blogs are often out dated.

It doesn't really matter what keywords you use for subpages as long as your page is optimized for them and your content is a match.

As long as you build backlinks to your site and subpages, you'l be going in the right direction!

From my experience

Full Page Ads
In my honest opinion, they do not provide a consistent income as they only serve to annoy the web users. I tried and tested and would never use full page ads again (unless your only focus is income but this will come at the cost of users and traffic).

in text ads
these are somewhat less annoying for users – when using the in text ads I found that the revenue was pretty pump.

In my expereince, fixed ads work best, I use Google, Tradedoubler and Commision Junction. Google is always the highest performa but the other 2 can bring bigger commisions (depends on the site and volume of content). I like Google best as you get paid for the click, you never lose.

I run my free business websites on this principal, bigger sites can demand much higher prices simply for display so its a differant ballpark.

Anyway, I suggest minimal use of interstitail ads, fixed position (well placed and colour matching) has always been my winner.

UPDATE – missed the SEO part sorry.

From my experience interstitail ads are only damaging to SEO if you allow full page ads to open on a visitors first page visit. Example, Adsense Full page ads can be set to be displayed to visitors after a number of page views (1,3,5 if I recall correctly). I experimented with the 1 page ads but found that:
a, my ad revenue went down (surprisingly)
b, I had less page views with much higher bounce rates (not surprisingly)
c, page integration to search engines was slower (I'm guessing that the spiders bounced too)

Notwithstanding this, there was no change to actual page rank and visitor level were pretty much the same. From this we can conclude that full page ads are not the money spinner they would initially appear to be. To be honest, I dont think I would use this as an advertising means either.

Full page ads are on a par with pamphlets through your door, at first they were shiny and interesting, after a while they just get damn annoying. Once you annoy a user, you lose their interest! the rest is obvious.

I hope this helps. Maybe someone else has had some success.

Well SEO is one of the best and cost effective things which you can do with your business and gain lots & lots of popularity.

First step you should do is to look out for keywords using the following tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Search for keywords and you will also find some similar words related to your keywords. Decide on keywords which are most related to your business and do the following activities:

Social Bookmarking – It means bookmarking your website on various Social Bookmarking websites like digg.com, delicious.com, jamespot.com, fanpop.com etc.

Question & Answers websites. Answers questions related to your business and get visitors to visit your website. There are many Q & A websites like Yahoo Answers, Blurtit.com, answerbag.com. yedda.com etc.

Above two will help you get referral traffic and some dofollow links from bookmarking websites will also help you in increasing website popularity.

Remember SEO is not the end all and be all of internet marketing.

Some free sites to visit:

http://www.inboundinternetmarketingblog.com

http://www.sethgodin.com

http://www.davidmeermanscott.com

http://www.hubspot.com

Hubspot is a great company with a ton of free stuff.

Use their free webgrader.

The one, best reference is to see if they are members of the largest most reputable group of Search professionals, SEMPO (the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization. Their directory of member companies is here: http://www.sempo.org/directories/ You can find one in your areas with that link. It's not an endorsement but it's very helpful.

What else can you do? Here are some RED flags – don't work with any vendor that says they guarantee or promise the top spot or even the first page. Either they can't deliver or they will get you rankings for keywords that don't prove value, such as for your brand name.

SEO's for small businesses are typically small businesses themselves, so get local references. Ask for five and call at least three. Remember that you don't need just traffic, you need "quality" traffic and that's what makes a good SEO. Ask the references if they get more SALES as a result.

As a fall-back, call your yellow page provider. All of them have an SEO program (AT&T, Yellow Book, Verizon etc.). They are reputable and have generally good results. You can also use Web.com, Yodle and Reach Local. They are national companies and have average results (see links below). They will also give you a good idea of what the right rates should be…

Good luck!