The best way to avoid the snake oil is to stay away from learning on forums, especially black hat forums. Most often the OP have some 'amazing trick' they discovered that will make lightning come from the sky and shoot your site up to the top of Google, you just to buy a tool that they so happen to make. Most often than not they don't work or only work a lil bit but may come back to bite you on the end.
SEOmoz has a great beginners course, Distilled has Distilled University http://www.distilled.net/u/ and following reputable blogs and sites will help Search Engine Journal http://www.searchenginejournal.com, Search Engine Land http://searchengineland.com ... to name a few. If you do come across some material that you're not sure of check their research which they should provide. If they can only give personal, anecdotal results with no data to back it up you should stay away from it.