Jason Calacanis writes in Black hat and White hat SEO (or “Is SEO B.S. or not?”):

My belief has always been that:

a) if you do a great site and you take your time you will rise in the Google rankings

b) I have faith in Google’s ability to sort the good from the bad

c) all the SEO folks I’ve ever talked to–and I’ve talked to many over the past decade or so–have pitched me on expensive contracts that you can’t cancel for two years with them to do all kinds of shady things to move up in the rankings

d) the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently

That last line bears repeating: the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently. I think there are a lot of bloggers who spend a lot of time worrying about SEO when their time would be better spent writing another great piece on a unique topic…