In a perfect world, you'd be able to write great content and people would be able to find it without much trouble.
The way most search engines work, however, is to factor in back-links as a way of measuring how authoritative a single page or website is.
Without going into too much detail every blog or niche website should have a SEO strategy that combines both on-page and off-page techniques to boost search rankings.
Below are a few that I have used on several websites to achieve this with a small amount of effort.
1.
Submit Blog Posts To Directories Not only can a blog post be great content with which to update your site, they can also be submitted to a variety of other locations to give you the opportunity for back-links.
Stick with the top directories such as EzineArticles, Go Articles and Articles Base or use a submission service such as Submit Your Article (which I use) to distribute your article to many other places.
Not all links will be counted by search engines due to duplicate content filters, but you should still get a decent amount of benefit for a little extra effort.
2.
Add New Content Regularly Many people set up niche sites and then forget about them once they've achieved the top ranking.
Quite often you'll see that they eventually get out-ranked by someone who is a little more proactive in adding new content on a regular basis.
This keeps the search engines crawling your pages, and helps assure them your content is still relevant.
3.
Tweet And Share Your Content Not only does using social media to push your content get it in front of potential new readers but Google has previously stated that it uses shares and tweets as another measure of page authority.
The advent of Google's own +1 is an even stronger indication of how much influence the level of sharing can have.
4.
Trade Blog Comments Getting comments on your blog is an easy way to keep it updated without having to do anything.
But what happens if people don't post comments on your blog? The easiest thing to do is simply comment on other peoples' blogs who may also not get a lot of comments and who may be inclined to return the favor.
5.
Install A Twitter Feed Similarly, having a Twitter feed (or any widget that updates automatically) installed somewhere like your blog's sidebar or header will help to keep the content on your pages looking recent and up-to-date.
Just remember to actually post a tweet every once in a while or, if you want to cheat, add a feed from a celebrity or other personality that has some relevance to your niche.
6.
Post On Yahoo Answers Yahoo Answers is the number one question and answer service available online and all you need to do to get a relatively high-quality back-link is answer a question that relates to your website and post your link as the source.
You have the ability to receive traffic from people who directly stumble on the question page or boost your own website's page rank as a result of the Yahoo page gaining authority.
I've witnessed several sites that have reached the first page with no major links other than a Yahoo answer or two.
7.
Create A Viral Video When people mention viral videos, you automatically assume that you need to attract millions of views to receive any benefit.
Certainly that's the case if you want to reach the news, but it's not necessary to increase your search ranking.
One simple video I created for a niche site only had about 900 views by which time it had obviously been linked to by a few high-ranking sites and helped that niche site reach PR4 within about a week (and my only link was from that YouTube video).
You don't have to worry about creating something spectacular, but your video should at least inspire people to share the video with someone else.
90% of the time that means it is funny, but other types of videos (particularly ones that spark controversy or discussion) can be effective as well.