Search on Google for your target keyword
To receive a good ranking, some web page designers use spamdexing or as we like to call it black hat seo. Spamdexing or black hat seo techniques are the use of various methods to deliberately manipulate HTML pages to artificially increase their positioning on the search engines results page.
Remember that search engines want to give you the best and most relevant results based on your search, so keywords and content play a major role in this process. Many articles that stress the importance of good keyword research. There are lot's of keyword tools and strategies out there, but honestly the tool that Google offers for FREE has really been my tool of choice.
The average SEO specialist, in addition to their client portfolio, should be testing out the secrets and techniques they develop on personal projects and experimentally sites. Think about it - if they don't test the stuff out themselves, how can they adapt and understand what SEO tactics really work?
Do a search - Search on Google for your target keyword. Visit the top 10 sites with the mindset: "How do I get my link on THIS site?". The answer probably lies above or beneath you. For example, you may often see an article directory. If you were to write and submit an article, with your target keyword as part of the headline, who knows what might happen? Especially if you submit the RSS feed of all your articles.
Now the big problem with this SEO secret is that it's actually very difficult to implement it properly. It's easy to get a bunch of low-ball links to your site, but they will not make much impact to its rank. In order to get a top rank, you need high quality links, and lots of them. This is why so many people are not able to get as many high ranks as possible - because getting good quality links to your site can be difficult unless you know a long list of contacts & webmasters who will give you these links.
When you're selecting your keywords, consider carefully the balance between keyword population and keyword specificity. Popular just means that you'll be part of a very large crowd; too specific means you'll miss people that are searching too generally.