To boost your rank:
- update site regularly
- get good back links over time
- use Google Keyword tool and Google trends to see what content is most relevant
- make your site accessible
- make your site light weight and use less http requests
- link to great websites
- use more content then HTML
- use friendly URLs
- use a domain that is up in years
- link to page within your own site
- provide a robots.txt and sitemap to Google Web Master tools
- post quality over quantity
- optimize your website for users not just search (kinda odd but true)
- use web standards
- use microformats, RDFa, and ARIA and schema.org.