SEO formula

Yep, your keywords should be in your content. The maximum times keywords should appear is just before it stops sounding natural to a reader. Remember that people read this too :)

As for general guidelines around SEO there are a ton of basic things that you can do. I think the most important ones are

• make sure the title tag is set on your page to what the article is about.
• make sure the meta description tag is set on your page and is a call to action to get the readers to click on your link in google's search results (click through % matters)
• Figure out the keywords you're targeting and make sure they appear in the title, description, and content of the post.
• Make sure that you link to your article on your own site (and put the title with keywords in the anchor text)
• Make sure your site has a sitemap.xml
• Make sure the robots.txt allows your site to be indexed by google.
• Link to other articles that are relevant to the topic of the page (to associate this page with a topic)

Read the Google Webmaster Guidelines for more things to do.

Keywords are a big one... and probably the most difficult part of creating valuable content for a website. I'd suggest you figure out your keywords using the google keyword tool (just google it) and try the wordtracker.com keyword tool trial for 7 days... I'm on it now and it's quite good. Plus they have excellent video tutorials on picking keywords, and not to forget the site is very well designed and built, so it's a pleasure to use.

Once you do pick your keywords, make sure not to saturate your page with them too much. Your content should be readable and enjoyable, and not blatantly keyword saturated, if you know what I mean. This is an awesome book I just finished... super easy and fast to read, and very good for beginners: Be #1 on Google