The key to getting good rankings for good keywords is really the same as it's always been: writing stuff people actually want to read/find useful and getting it referenced by sites and services with a large audience and a decent reputation.

That's why so many startups and agencies fail miserably with their blogs; because their content is third rate crap that no one really wants to read. They wonder why say, Moz or Sitepoint gets all the traffic, and you want to say "have you actually looked at your own work?" given that the latter two companies offer useful, actionable advice and they don't. It's like they expect the magic Google fairy to take their uninteresting work and hey presto, it suddenly appears on page 1 and get millions of views.

Okay, it's not quite that simple. Sites with a bigger marketing budget tend to do better, as do sites and companies willing to put a lot more time into getting content out on a regular basis. And yes, some people will get temporarily (or sometimes semi permanent) advantages through dodgy things like private blog networks and paid links.

But actually trying and putting in the effort/treating the SEO side as a full time job is really the minimum here, and many don't seem to even bother.