Last Google updates made a lot of problems. Spam, cloaking and doorway sites are getting better rankings than fair sites do. Most of you may have heard that Page Rank is no more the decisive criteria for good ranking. Besides of page rank, highly relevant links became extremely important. I have the examples when a relevant links make site get top10 ranked in less than a week. You can check your site's link popularity with a free link popularity check script at
http://www.uptimebot.com/ . It is also useful to register at free counters and put counter code on your page - you automatically receive a link from a category that is relevant to your site's content. For instance, try
http://www.top100categories.com/ or add your site in
http://www.uptimebot.com/friends.php directory.
Thanks for attention and good luck with your SEO tryouts.