SEO For Beginners

You're probably even more tired of my posts about Brain Tumor/Surgery than I am, so I'll go off on a "rant" on another topic :-)

I still need to draw your attention to that Donate button over there... Okay, done.

A Beginner's Guide To SEO:
#1: CONTENT IS KING
Put content on your site that people want, and make it easy to find/browse in your own navigation.
If you have content people WANT, and people can find it, and search engines can read it (don't bury it in Flash) then you're all set.
If not, you have no "game" and all the SEO in the world won't do squat for you.

#2
Follow some common-sense basics like using HTML/CSS properly, with valid markup, and a good TITLE tag matching an H1 tag relating to what's on the page.
Put your important content first in the text, and use CSS to position it where you like.
Try to use a decent domain name that you can shout to a roomful of drunk people that they'll remember, maybe, the next day.
Even if your target audience is NOT rooms full of drunken people, it's still a good metric for the domain name.

#3
A META Description is good, if it matches the page/site content, and provides a consistent "brand" (theme/mission/image) you want to promote. You'd have to ask some Marketing drone whether it's a "brand" or an "image".
META Keywords haven't been used by any major search engine in years: Anybody who says different is stupid or out-dated. Or both.

#4
Don't try to "game" the system with techniques that misrepresent your content. As soon as the search engine makers figure out what you and all the other idiots are doing, they DEDUCT points for it, and you lose, Game Over.
Unless they just ban your site completely from the results, in which case you've just wasted your oh-so-precious domain name. GAME OVER!!!

#5, #6, #7, #8, #9: See #1

#10
After you have done that, worry about tweaking the so-called SEO junk to improve your site that last 1%.
Image ALT keywords, re-positioning

PS
I believe most SEO "experts" are charlatans, and I refuse to label myself an SEO expert.
Make of that what you want...