Well this was one of the more interesting things I came upon this week, I found out that Google actually just released an ebook to teach novice webmasters how to perform some basic search engine optimization. Obviously it isn't promoting anything that you wouldn't expect from Google, but I still found it quite interesting. I also feel it is a pretty good starting point for a newbie. You can find the ebook here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
Very well could have been but I did not see it anywhere so i figured I would post it, that's the way of forums
This is a great place for a newbie to start. If only they would search this forum before asking the same questions over and over.