I guess I'll go ahead and throw in my 2 cents:
"editorial pages" - Whatever you call them, new, text intensive keyword rich pages are very important. I have a site that was languishing around page 20 for a long time, even though I was getting new trades, adding text to existing pages, all the right stuff. I thought of a way to add new text rich pages, similar to what xxxjay is doing, and went to page one within 30 days. Coincidence? Could be. So I tried it on another domain with the same results. Now I make sure to add 2-3 new pages with lots of text and keywords every month.
"Page Rank" - I disagree with DD that it's total shit. Probably lukewarm stale piss though, and definitely overrated by most webmasters, at least right now. I think google has dampened the crap out of PR in the algo due to webmasters manipulating it for their evil, sinister purposes, but they haven't bailed on PR altogether, hence the Code Jam contest.
http://www.google.com/codejam/
"Relevant Links" - I think DD is right on the money with this one. I recently had a debate with someone over whether this was something google placed emphasis on. He said
"No way, man. Google's not doing that. Even if they wanted to, there's now way they could."
Well of course they can. It's what they do every day. They figure out what a page is about and then do something or other with it. Now, I wouldn't refuse a link trade because the other guys page was off topic for mine. I just keep this in mind when linking my own sites or when I'm looking for new sites to trade with.
"Recip Link Text" - Another "right on the money" imo. Mix up the link text that you get other wm's to use when linking back to you. A thousand links pointing back to your site using identical link text probably will raise a flag with google.
"Optimizing Internal Page Rank" - I try to make sure that no page on my site is farther than 2 clicks away from any other page. I use an SSI file at the bottom of all my pages as a "site map".
"Be kind to your Mother" - Word.
SS