We know exactly what you asked for this holiday season... a quide to the Google Panda search algorithm update!
Okay, we know that's more up our alley but it's good for you to know a few dos and don'ts when it comes to modern Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Google's Panda update to their search engine algorithm focuses on weeding out bad content and promoting helpful, useful, and unique content:

5 Things That Cause Bad Rankings

Heavy Template Footprint

Your website should never be too template-oriented.  Make it original and the search engines will take notice.

Empty Content

If your site has a lot of pages that solely contain links, think again.  Any given page shouldn't exist if it doesn't do any good.  Make the content worth the read.

Overlapping and Redundant Articles

Each page of your site should address a specific topic, instead of addressing a slightly different variation of a keyword phrase. How many variations of "Acai Berry Cleanse" does a website need? Combining these articles into a few, highly usable resources would cut down on the confusion.

High Ad Ratio

We understand the temptation. You can’t escape it. Google even tells us to plaster ads all over our site. But the Adwords team is separate from the spam team lead by Matt Cutts. Don’t expect them to both give the same advice.

Affiliate Links and Auto Generated Content

If a machine built your pages with minimal human intervention, Google wants to devalue you. We see this time and time again with multiple affiliate sites across the web.

How to Beat Panda and Keep Your Site's Rankings Up

1. Write unique, quality content for each page of your site.
2. Focus on site architecture and intelligent navigation based on which page a user is on.
3. Stay away from computer generated content -- it doesn't work!