White Hat SEO: unique title tags, unique meta descriptions, unique urls, correct use of headers and other HTML elements, fast loading pages, & content, content, content. The best way it was described to me is that its best to think of each page of content as a lottery ticket to the google front page. The more unique original content you have the better chance that one of your pages will get ranked for some keyword. Really as simple as that. I have articles from my app ranked on the 1st page of google in less than a week just following these guidelines and my app has a page rank of 0 since its new. (
http://moz.com and
http://www.kalzumeus.com are great resources)
Black Hat SEO: Compensate people to link to your website or find websites that pass link "juice" to your site. I don't recommend this path. (http://jmarbach.com/rapgenius-growth-hack-exposed)