Hi all, (my vision and how i see things) Improving the rankings on google has a lot to do with links to your website from other (inside the google datebase) websites. Having many links will improve your ranking above another website with the same keywords. Ofcourse there are many ways of getting many links...trading...but then your own website gets also full... FFA....forget it.... ever thought about guestbooks !! if you look at google ...query guestbook.htm you get more then 125.000 results.... in many guestbooks you can also add your URL..they ask for it... I saw on this great website no postings about this matter...for that reason i give this information here.... Ofcourse its not nice to SPAM those guestbooks with all websites... just in case you have more then one...but sure this is a way to improve you rankings for a long time...and if you keep it nice, with a comment about that website...you wont be removed for sure... Like to hear also your comment on this...
The simplest way to rank well and not have to worry about a lot of the techno mumbo jumbo behind SEO is have interesting content that people want to link to. For example, on one of my blogs last year I wrote an entry about how Paypal screwed me over and what I ended up doing to get my money back. I submitted my article to Digg and it took off. To this day, I'm still getting a slow trickle of visitors to my site from that article/digg submission.
I could write an article on yahoo, i set up an adwords account on their facility, after 2 month i look at it more closely and as i was not getting enough click thru i cut the account, as it was a prepay account i tried to get the amount refunded to my credit card... do you think i could get an answer from big brother...NOT
How to improve your rankings without tricks? Simple! Produce the most relevant search result to what is most likely in the mind of the surfer making the search query. Bare in mind "when producing your content" (It being King and all) whether you would be happy your Mum your Dad your Husband your Wife your Son your Daughter your Best Friend or your Brother or Sister would be happy and satisfied with your result for their search query and that they wouldn't get riled up to get you for wasting their time adding to the crud they have to trawl through and you will be on the right track and the world will be your oyster courtesy of the SE's!
If you have good content, people will read it. If these people like it, they will link to you on their own accord. If you build natural links this way, based on quality content, you will have good rankings in SERPS, considering the content, and your popularity is better than your competitors. There's nothing wrong with building backlinks using other methods that aren't shady.....Directories, articles, reciprocals, blog commenting, ect.
I think good and unique content is more important coz without tricks surely it will help your site boost its PR and more returning people would come to your site and many of them will surely link your site to there site without asking them to