Latest SEO Trends

If you are aware that the techniques that used to work years ago are no more effective, then Search Engine Optimization is no harder task for you.

The search engine techniques that were used years ago are not much effective now. There was a time when you can stuff any number of keywords in the Title and Meta tags etc. But now Search Engine penalizes sites for such stuff. Further link exchange or reciprocal link is now outdated technique. Because Search Engine can detect it easily now.

 Nowadays Search Engine gives more weightage to one-way links like directory, forum links, bookmark submission etc. 

Many webmasters used to give comments on blogs with a url to own site. So they easily get backlink from a high PR site which is related to the theme of their own site. But now Search Engine strictly suppot "NO-FOLLOW" tag. So those links are not followed or counted by the search engines.

SE also penalize sites by checking IP address of page where the link is orginates. It means Search Engine gives more importnace to links from different hosting severs. If you have a large netword of sites hosted from same server, SE will discount the value of those links.
Search Engine can also detect the speed at which a site acquire links. If you have a brand new site and it suddenly shows high page rank pages pointing to it, Search Engine will assume that you depends on link buying and will not give page full credit for those links.
So its always a good idea to keep yourself according to updated information about SEO.