[monaghan]

I think a lot of people don't really understand the value of links and how to go about getting them.

You see suggestions about submitting articles, so many of the articles I've seen are just pure rubbish with a link at the bottom.

I guess the main problem is that there's no published info about the algorythms the engines use and how to build your own pages. I know the search engines would then be inviting spam, but at least the man in the street would be able to read fact about SEO rather than 100 different interpretations of the results of SEO's experimentations.

Also as Brian suggests, there's a lot of sharks that will take your money and "tweak" your site so it looks good to the engines, then continually tweak again and again as the loop holes used are closed by the engines.

I don't think SEO has to be SPAM, however from what I see, a lot of SEO is spam.

I've got a site for a local charity from nowhere to position 6 on Google's global search and position 3 for UK search for a search on their name (which is how most people currently looking for them will search) just by a simple site change that removed clutter and put some basic structure into the site (I now just need them to add some other content so they will start to show up in searches for their work, but that's another story)