I am the first to admit that I am not the best at this particular topic. I understand some basics for making a site friendlier to Google and mixing up keywords, but I am not at the level that some specialists are who can literally drive your ranking straight up to number one on the searches.
I have always believed that you need a good balanced mix of SEO techniques including real-world marketing to get organic traffic. And with organic traffic your site’s pagerank will rise with it. Varying and natural traffic is the key (organic traffic) to making lots of ad revenue and impressions, but targeted optimization is what keeps users coming back.
Simply having spectacular content with some basic tricks will do wonders without even delving into the search engine optimization black hole (more of a black art at this point). If you content is good and interesting and constantly flowing (at LEAST one post per day if not more) and you use Facebook and Twitter to promote yourself and you stay on top of things (a stale blog will hurt you more than help you) you will be successful. Keep grinding away without the expectation of a returned profit on something you love to do and people will start to read.
There are no spectacular tricks to make your site number one. If the content sucks and nobody wants to read it then you might be able to trick people with SEO or by buying blind linked traffic, but it’s going to be sketchy. Write about something you love and provide value through a unique perspective or approach. That is all it takes.