Unfortunately, there are no more any general recipie to rank a site. Here are some guidelines:
Choose keywords properly (target long tail keywords with very little competition first, and move progressively to more difficult keywords)
Have quality content LSI-rich: On page optimization is less critical than 10 years ago. Low bounce rate and good user experience are a must.
Have a few good links from related sites. A good link is a link that gets traffic with low bounce rate (so it excludes any type of manipulated traffic).
Promote your content using non SEO methods : social media, forums, guest blogging, your list, press releases...
I read less and less success stories based on blackhat methods. I'm sure they still work, but they are trickier and trickier and reserved to the experts
Suggested reading (search them on G)
- on pure white hat seo: Brian Dean
- Terry kyle (he uses some grey hat methods but in a very clever way)