Matt Cutts head of the Google anti-spam team, has put together a great set of videos answering questions asked by his loyal army of blog readers.  Worth checking out for a quick grounding in points to consider.

Access them on Google Video below:

Matts Disclaimer
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1147504221425038991

Session 1:
- Sitemaps updates
- Top SEO mistakes
- Snippets (see my post here about Google descriptions from last year for more detail)
- Bold vs Strong
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5179191836301432169

Session 2:
- Including some SEO Myths
- Multiple sites
- Large sites multi-country
- Google image search
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3583760678227172395

Session 3:
- Should you Optimize for Search Engines or for Users?
- Code cleanliness
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8553629667451959310&hl=en

Session 4:
- Static vs. Dynamic urls: does PageRank flow the same to both? What pitfalls should I avoid with dynamic urls?
- Can Sitemaps alert webmasters when their site has been hacked?
- Can I do geotargetting within Google’s Quality Guidelines?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6860320126300142609

(I disagree with his comments regarding crawling global sites and IP redirects, as the crawler IP's don't correctly match their index geographies, something Google need to address)

Session 5: (and I change the background to look less kidnapped!)
- Merging acquired domains with 301s?
- How to create a site architecture with themes and keywords?
- My urls have too many parameters–can I serve up static HTML to Googlebot instead?
- How to do split A/B testing
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1156145545372854697

Session 6: All about Supplemental Results
- Should I worry about results estimates
- Why do 301s take so long to be reflected in supplemental results?
- I started appearing in the supplemental results in May–should I be worried
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3494613828170903728

Updates added 04/08/06

Session 7
- Does Google Analytics play a part in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)?
- When does Google detect duplicate content, and how wide is the range?
-SafeSearch–what do you recommend?
- Is it okay to make hyperlinks in option elements?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9028425054136856586

(notice how Matt steers round the Google Analytics question by saying the web spam team doesn't use it, but doesn't give a definite answer for anyone else. As the Google Toolbar also tells them what websites you visit and when, analytics probably does have a strong role to play in rankings.)

Session 8: Google Terminology
- What’s the difference between an index update, an algorithm update, and a data refresh?
- Definitions in terms of June/July 27th
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8475081922887713591

Session 9: All about datacenters
- Can you tell us a little bit about Google datacenters?
- Should all datacenters on the same Class C block be roughly the same?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8726665066825965913

Session 10: Lightning Round!
- Is it possible to search just for home pages?
- News Flash: you can use strong and em instead of bold (b) and italics (i) !
- Will we ever see kitty posts again?
- What are Google SSD, Google RS2, and all those other things Tony Ruscoe found?
- Does Google rank blog sites any differently than regular websites?
- Does Google treat .gov.pl links with the same weight as regular .gov links?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1756437348670651505

Session 11: Reinclusion requests
- How do I do a reinclusion request?
- What should I put into a reinclusion request?
- What does Google need to know before it reincludes a site in its index?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-51167291563232332

Session 12: Tips for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose 2006
- What tips and tricks do you recommend for Search Engine Strategies (SES) San Jose?
- What sessions do you definitely plan to attend?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4648779681675044189

Session 13: Google Webmaster Tools
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ provides tools to
- tell Google that www.domain.com and domain.com are the same
- test out robots.txt files
- discover crawl errors that Googlebot saw
- see some spam penalties
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4526554928294588907