The only one I really take any notice of is my stats package, then i manually check the position. I can see that all my major competition are bidding on terms I appear naturally for
No, it's part of my Master's thesis. I did a correlation analysis of on-page attributes and search rank. I haven't posted it because I like to keep a low profile. Email me at owack.j-at-gmail-dotcom and I'll send you a summary of the findings.
Content should most certainly be at the very top of the list. You need good content to keep the people who click on your inbound links and find you through a search engine.
Apparently you haven't been reading DP for long. If you had been, you would know that PageRank is the only factor that matters
My ranking was #1 for a certain search term, but I am no longer #1 for this term. My inbound link number did not change... so how did my page-rank change?
It's too broad to say inbound links. I want to focus on the quality of them. Quality backlinks simply to put; Relevant links from high PR page A link from the site that ranks high with your own keyword