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I met John P today.  He created the web site www.htmlhelp.com and suggested we read this article.  Giving you the highlights and a link for more info:

Article: Improving Search Engine Rankings / SEO: Fact vs. Fiction

Design Checklist

• Offer a site map with links that point to important parts of the site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, break it into separate pages. These help search engines locate all of the content on a site.
• Make sure each page is reachable by at least one static link. If a search engine cannot find your document, it will never show up in a user inquiry.
• Keep URL’s simple and static. Complicated URL’s are difficult for people to type and hard to remember. Additionally, longevity is a factor in search ranking (more on this later…).
• Keep the site hierarchy fairly flat. That is, each page should only be one to three clicks away from the home page. This aids both humans and machines in navigating the site.
• Avoid the unnecessary use of frames as search engines often have difficulty indexing them correctly.
• Minimize the use of Macromedia flash as well as Java applets. Although they can add useful demonstrations and animations to a site, they are not indexed by search engines.
• Since dynamic page content is expected to change frequently, the relevance to search keywords will probably not be maintained. Moving content to static pages will improve indexing and lighten the load on the Web server.
• Make sure internal pages link to the homepage to aid navigation.
• Organize content by topic and divide the site into logical sections, each focusing on a given topic. This allows search engines to better target specific information relevant to keyword searches.

Design Summary

A Web site which is optimized for search engine effectiveness will be as easy to navigate as a good book. The home page should read like a table of contents, linking visitors to relevant information organized into useful sections. Sites which feature dynamically generated content such as forums or weblogs should still incorporate static HTML pages to aid search engines. Images, animations, scripts and videos should be used only when text is inappropriate and they add to the value of a given page.

Content Checklist

• Create a useful, information rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content or links. Search engines can’t read images, and neither can people with visual disabilities.
• Choose topics which are original and unique.
• Limit pages to a reasonable size. If the content is lengthy offer a Table of Contents and divide the information into usable pages. This also allows each section to be more targeted by search engines.
• Exercise “Conservation of Words”. Once you’ve gotten the message across, stop writing. Verbosity for the sake of increasing “keywords” will only drive real visitors away. And that’s not good for traffic building!
• Proof-read, spell check and get peer reviewed. Every site can benefit from multiple opinions and multiple content edits. If your content isn’t good enough to be published in the newspaper it won’t be good enough to compete on the Web against millions of other pages.
• Make sure the TITLE element for your document is concise and accurate. The page TITLE is used by search engines to display link text as the result of a search.
• Ensure that each IMG element includes an ALT atribute.
• Provide links to interesting, related content when appropriate, but keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.
• Always reference citations and sources. This indicates to search engines that the content is of research quality.
• Illegal content within a page will most likely result in that page’s omission from search engines. Especially in certain countries.

Content Summary

Put more time and energy into developing content that will be useful to people, and less into worrying about it being “pretty” or where it is going to show up in search engines. You will get many times the return on your investment.

Linking Checklist

• Search engines monitor the rate of acquisition of links to a site. Too many, too fast could indicate “unnatural” link buying activity and harm a site’s rankings. This is another reason not to buy into any “buy a bunch of links” schemes.
• Search engines also monitor the rate of removal of incoming links to a site. If several sites begin simultaneously removing links it may indicate a user-affecting issue.
• Broken outgoing links which are not rectified promptly will indicate that a site is infrequently updated to search engines and can potentially harm rankings.
• Affiliations between a linking site and the linked site may be inspected by some search engines. If for example, they share an IP address or have a common postal address on the “contact us” page, the search engine will, at best, ignore the link.
• Be sure that sites you link to are relevant to the topic of your Web page and will be appreciated by your visitors.

Links Summary

Links, paid or otherwise, are generally considered a good thing for search engine rankings; however, the link source must be relevant, constant and reputable.

See entire article here: http://www.htmlhelp.com/feature/seo/

Table of Contents

• Abstract
• Search Engine Theory
• Designing for Search Effectiveness
• Content Recommendations
• Technical Recommendations
• Site Linking & Popularity
• Other Factors
• Pitfalls
• Summary
• Resources