From my own experience, best tactics are..... Article marketing, article marketing and.... article marketing. You can use many on page seo tactics like, recent search keywords, relative content links, breadcrumbs, most popular posts etc... Write lot's of original articles and submit it to as many directories as you can.
good backlinks help SERP, these could be from : 1. top directories 2. good article sites 3. one way link exchange 4. bookmarking sites with excellent visitor traffic 5. good forum postings so the more effort you put in the better backlinks you will gain & consequently the better SERPs
Good backlinks are key and backlinks that point to those backlinks lol Content is #1 though, make sure you have good content!
There are number of SEO activities that you can be done on daily basis to build back links. Perform article submissions, directory submissions, forum posting, blog commenting, link exchange with relevant theme websites, create squdioo, hubpages etc.