Some people give more importance to content while some on links. I think for getting a decent google rank, a proper combination of both is required in addition to on-page optimization. The first thing you should do is to make sure your on-page optimization is perfect. For this you will have to make sure your title, headings, meta tags, and keyword density is right.

The title is very important for google and you must include your main keyword(s) in the title. After that you have to make sure that your meta tags for description and keywords is perfect and all important keywords are included in your keyword tag. After that, the first paragraph in your content must contain your important keywords but ofcourse written in a user friendly way and must make some sense. Opinions are divided on keyword density, some seo's try to have more keyword density while others say that excessive use of keywords may be harmful as google is very strict. I too personally believe that its better to be safe than sorry, and you must be very careful here to ensure that all important keywords are there and at the same time they are not used excessively. A high keyword density may work well in msn and yahoo but may not work in case of google. My experience says having a keyword density of 5-10% works best.

Hope you people liked reading this, do share what you think about this. I will discuss about backlinks in my future blogs.