Lee Odden just published an excellent interview he did with Laura Lippay, SEO Program Manager for Yahoo Media Group. I first heard about Laura on CNet, when I saw her excellent SEO 101 video (she’s cute, isn’t she?). You may also have seen her posting smart comments/posts at SEOMoz, Highrankings forums , or Cre8asiteforums.
The best part of the interview is this one:

If there were 3-5 site optimization tips you were to recommend to web masters, what would they be?
1. Usability comes before SEO – better yet, they should work hand in hand. But don’t compromise your user experience for SEO. Unless you’re spamming, of course.

2. SEO isn’t just about H1 tags and title tags – more importantly, you need traffic. You need to be good enough, you need to be smart enough, and gosh darnit , people need to like you. Well, your site at least. In that respect, your client needs to see you as not just an SEO, but a strategist of sorts, and you absolutely HAVE to be a part of site building from the beginning concept stages.

3. You can listen to what everyone else preaches about what works for SEO or you can find out for yourself. Most SEO “facts” are just things they hear from other SEO’s which they heard from other SEO’s which they read in some article that who knows who wrote it, etc. Where are the cold hard facts? They’re in your data, people! Set up a tight analytics structure and go in and do things to your site and test the results for yourself. You’ll be the smartest (and richest) SEO on the block.

I think Yahoo is going to love working with such a smart person.

Of course, Lee Odden asked her if she got to know Yahoo! “secret sauce”, but she promised she doesn’t get any knowldedge from the Yahoo search team (yet?) but she said she has to “get them drunk and hope to get secrets out of them just like everyone else. ” 🙂