Contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be an SEO "guru" to rank well in the Search Engines. There are only a handful of things you need to do in order to rank well. Those who concentrate on what's important will quickly pass those who spend their time worrying about all of the little things that may or may not increase their rankings!
Below you will find the 5 most important SEO factors:
1: Links - The quantity and quality of the links on the WWW which point to your site and it's subpages is the #1 off-page SEO factor! When it comes to top Search Engine rankings the most influential factor really is the incoming links! Submit articles and do selective link exchanges to give your site a push-start and let your good content (below) bring it to the top!
2: Title and META Tags - The title and META description of each individual page is the most important on-page SEO factor! Craft your title and description in a way that is both Search Engine friendly (contains your primary keyword) and user friendly (convinces them to click.) Remember, if it is full of keywords and not user friendly, your rankings will not matter, as no one will click. If it is user friendly, but doesn't contain your main keyword, you will not rank as high as you would if it had your keyword (in most cases.)
3: Internal Linking - A good internal linking structure will not only show the SE's which of your pages are more important, it can actually increase the rankings of those pages! Use the rel="nofollow" attribute on links that don't need any "link juice" like your contact pages, about pages, affiliate links and duplicated pages.
4: Quality Content - Quality content will bring in "natural" links. If you're spitting out low-quality, rehashed content, you won't impress anyone. If you do not impress anyone your job will be much harder, as you'll have to manually build all of your links.
5: Keyword Density doesn't Matter - "Keyword Density" is no longer important. With the implementation of "Latent Semantic Indexing" (LSI) most major Search Engines do not rank a page higher because it contains a keyword a set number of times. Just write natural content and good things will come!
So to recap, build solid incoming links, compose a good title and META description, create a solid internal linking structure, write quality content and don't worry about keyword density!
This is the strategy that has worked for me in order to obtain front-page ranking for many competitive terms and I'm confident it will for you as well!
To see how I've conquered some of the most competitive keywords on the Internet, visit http://www.TheEasySEOReport.com/ where I provide my extremely popular SEO Report for absolutely Free!