I have to agree with Jim, partly. There are certain basics of SEO that form a pretty solid foundation and doesn’t change that often. The rest is decoration but important decoration that is temporal.

But I agree with you that “experts” many times are just used car salesman in disguise (no offense to you Jim).

Some things about SEO remain constant through all the algorithm changes and trends. Putting readable, relevant, key word focused content on a page, that provides value to the human reader of the page, is the cornerstone of an SEO strategy that lasts.

From there getting in-bound links from relevant sites into the page, with the key words in the anchor text, is another key step in the process.

Outbound links to relevant authority sites, using the key words in the anchor text, is another.

Having spiderable content on the page, avoiding javascript links, minimizing flash content for SERP pages, having a spiderable site structure , etc are all good ideas from an SEO perspective.

Specific optimization tweaks to on page content can help once the above items are done and you are right, the impact of these rises and falls at the whims of the algorithms.

However if you have the cornerstones in place, the algorithm changes won’t impact you much since the page is focused on giving a searcher what they want, based on the search terms they used to find it. At the basic level, that is what the search engines want to do as well and any changes they make will not penalize good content and relevant links.

My 2.5 dollars …

Jim