SEO Blog has an amusing and instructive post about the ten levels of SEO. It’s a long read but there really are some choice lines in there for anyone who’s been around in this field for a while.
Regarding the use of “multi-award winning web promotion and site submission software”:
Several weeks later your site is still not in Google or Yahoo but mysteriously your inbox is receiving hundreds of spam emails every hour.
Regarding generating inbound links:
Eric in the Mail Room … offers to lend you his copy of professional auto links power plus enterprise edition linking software.
Regarding keywords:
You spend all weekend rewriting your content but when you have finished it reads like a speech impediment.
Regarding conferences:
Occasionally you post tantalizing reports from a conference you are attending but because you are in the bar until 7am every night they read like something out of Hello! magazine.
There’s lots more good stuff in here — especially if you ever want to reach ‘SEO nirvana’.