From personal experience you, I've found that
only three aspects really matter: Content; a
website is nothing without good content, and
good content is so difficult to come by, if your
not a talented writer. The second aspect has to
be backlinks. This is probably the most important
one too. Search Engines determine where to index
your site from the ammount of backlinks you have
just as much, as the quality of your content.
The more sites linking to you, the more popular
your site is to search engines.
The Last aspect and often mistaken as something
unimportant is the use of a sitemap. I've heard
of many webmasters saying their Search Engine
traffic increased dramatically thanks to a
sitemap. This is due to being able to specify
the importance of changing pages from your site.
Static pages are of no use to you as this has a
negative effect on your ranking. Sites of high
importance, i.e. pages that constanly change are
what the Search Bots love to index, and by
specifying this, the search engines will know
which url's to look for first. Ever changing
pages will dramatically increase your rankings.

I've come up with a formulae that I feel can't
fail when it comes to Optimization. You need
these 3 things for better rankings, as mentioned
before. 1) Good content, and what better way is
there to get high quality content, than articles?
2) Link popularity, and what better way is their
to link popularity than Link Directories?
3) Sitemaps-Constantly changing content, what
better way is there than owning a blog? Posts, you
have the opportunity to post everyday.

I've been using these three scripts, that you can
find available free of charge on the internet, and
turned them into my own little SEO Goldmine.
The Article Directory adds volume and content to
your site, making crawlers come to your site more
often and stay longer. The link directory allows
for multiple backlinks to your domain, increasing
page rank and ranking, and the blog allows you the
freedom of posting whenever you want to, and to have
new content frequently, so whenever your sitemap is
pinged, the search engines will find the new content
they so desperatly crave for.

After these steps are followed, the opportunities are
virtually limitless as to what you can accomplish!
Monetizing your site will also be much more effective,
and the rewards will speak for themselves