SEO is not
rocket science indeed, as the title says, and anyone with web design developing skills and
ftp access could do it, but there are limitations based on knowledge and where how and what.
What I found myself, is that you need a lot of patients and if you don't have it, you can forget about it.
SEO is a skill as anything else and what makes you stand out from the crowd is the little secrets that you discover yourself while doing it, but mostly and basic parts (in some cases) are just enough (depending on the competition) to get you high rankings and are available all over the web.