I think right now it is all about making quality content for your readers. Do not just keyword stuff and try to pull it off as something that is worth your time when it is not. Your customers will let you know their dissatisfaction and you will not get the ranking you think you deserve. Good content will bring in more customers on its own, word of mouth is still around in this day and age, even if it is by linking and sharing with their friends. This traffic will rank you higher.
This is not really something that is new for this year though. This is something that you should have been doing in the past. If you are ranking a little bit lower than normal, consider having someone write some new content for your site or do it on your own. It does not matter how you get your content, as long as it is of high quality. If you are a good writer, do it yourself. If not, hire someone. I am sure that there are plenty of people on this site who would love to help you get this done if you need a writer.
Back links are supposed to be pretty good as well. You can get people to follow links from sites that are similar to yours. Of course, do not go through and just post your link and say click here! This is not going to work. Everyone knows this is just you trying to promote your site and they are going to ignore it. You will need to put a bit of effort into your work for this. Post a bit, build up a reputation and then include your link into some useful information. Just a blank link will not attract customers.
I have found that writing quality articles on a blog and then putting my own link on the bottom as an example or somewhere else it makes sense is a good way to get more people onto my sites. You have to be careful with this and write an article that will actually draw in the audience. But if you do this well, the good content will bring the customers on your own, plus other sites will borrow your information and your link will end up on their site as well. Just one article, if done correctly, could bring in a lot of traffic.
Just be careful with the content you are using. If you copy material from another source word for word or use material that has already been on your site, you will not see the results. Google and the other search engines want value for their customers, not the same rehashing of some of the old material you put online. Make it original and you will get some great results.
There are also a lot of bad things that you should avoid overall to get good rankings. Keyword stuffing is bad. A 500 word article should not have a keyword in them 100 times. This is going to show Google that you are trying to game up the system, and you will actually lose points in the process. Rather, putting the keyword in the title, the beginning paragraph, and a few times throughout the material will be enough to get you a head start with this. Doing much more than this will just harm your efforts.
Never spam other pages in the hopes of getting back links. Google can tell when a back link is not very good and when you are just spamming others. You need to add value and just placing a link on a forum is not adding value to anyone. No one knows where that link is going to lead them (and with viruses anymore, most people will not go near it), and they have no idea why they should choose to click on your link.
Never have others post links for you or pay people to click on your link. The person needs to actually spend some time on your site and learn something or purchase something new. Traffic also takes time to build up and if 1000 people are all of a sudden on your site, but not purchasing anything or spending much time there, many search engines will become suspicious and may give you a lower ranking.