What is the best way to gain rank and targeted traffic?

Write your Titles correctly, Build intriguing and valuable content, and find ways for good websites to link to you. This is over-simplified, but is the basics to good SEO.

Write your titles with your target keywords included. Make sure that the page it's on is relevant and well optimized for those keywords as well. This is the easiest part of SEO.

Writing insightful, quality content is another thing. If you know your subject well, you should be able to come up with some content that other people in your field want to read. The more intriguing it is, the easier the next step will be.

Building one-way backlinks is much easier with good content. Building these links naturally can then be done with a promotion of your site. Promoting your site is a whole other ball game, but easier than trying to persuade webmasters to selflessly add links on their sites.