Google Optimization

Here we will help you develop a sensible strategy for promoting your website by weeding out all of the nonsense, myths and hype.
First of all, what puts a page at the top of the rankings?
Through use of top secret algorithms, Search Engines rank sites based on relevancy, accuracy and up-kept status of information. This counters SEO experts whose sole purpose is to get clients at the top of the rankings.
Two "strategies" can be applied to get into the top rankings:
"Black Hat Optimization" and "White Hat Optimization"

White Hat strategies deliver relevant, accurate, quality and timely information to help reinforce Search Engine design.
Black Hat refers to strategies that try to get around that by various ways of cheating. Black Hat techniques can work, but usually only for a short period of time until all the PhD's at Google figure out what you are doing and find a way to plug that loophole - and ban you while they are at it.

Though nobody can verify what works best as far as ranking factors. Given the goal of Search Engines, there are a handful of strategies that have survived the test of time, make logical sense, and have been physically proven:
1. Quality themed content, and lots of it. This goes beyond just stuffing in your keywords as much as possible. The SE's are getting better at determining themes by means of "latent semantic indexing", which basically means using artificial intelligence to work out what the site is about, rather than just what keywords are on it. To achieve this you need to provide your keyword, certainly, and also other words and phrases that are linked to them.
2. Links pointing to your site. Links coming from Authority sites are generally worth the most, as they are trusted sources of content. Links from so-called "bad neighborhoods" count for very little. Theme sites related to yours are worth more than non-related sites, ie political sites won't help you nearly as much as a pet site if you are likewise, a pet site. Search Engines don't penalize you for bad links coming into your site, but they certainly don't reward you for links from Free-For-All pages (FFA), link farms or other sites dubbed "bad." Google Page Rank is a good rough indication of how valuable a site is, the higher the better. PR is probably going to become theme specific, meaning that you may have a low PR for one theme but have a high PR for another theme.
3. Old sites - ie that have been around for a long time are worth more than new ones - in general your PR will rise with time, all other factors being equal.
4. New sites are also worthy - remember, the SE's want to deliver hot news, so they will give an initial priority to new sites, and also to new links pointing to sites, as they might indicate that there is some hot, recent, news on that site.
5. Links OUT to authority sites are also worth points. But don't have too many. While you are not penalized for any bad links coming in, you can be penalized if you link out to bad neighborhoods.

6. The keywords themselves - obviously some keywords are a lot more competitive than others. Aim to get ranked for your most specific keywords first. If you are a local business, then tag on the name of your town or state to the keyword.
7. Unique content. This is the key to both pages that link to you and your own site itself. Search Engine's are out to deliver original content; no one wants to see multiple pages of the same information. The most common way of people letting all their hard work go to waste is to copy the same pages everyone else is using. Search Engines are quick