SEO can seem like such a blackbox to anyone starting out.  Here is an informal list of what I feel are some good and bad practices.

Go out and hit the various SEO forums to find out the “why” behind these statements.

Don’t:

• overuse keywords in meta tags.
• overuse keywords in your page.
• hide text on your page.
• use someone else’s content.
• have the title of your page be ‘Homepage’ or ‘Index’

Do:

• update your content regularly.  Content is King!
• learn about CSS and why you would use it to build your site.
• have a site map.
• be sure to use names on your images.
• read more discussion boards on SEO and marketing.