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Every day countless webmaster forums and newsgroups are abuzz with the latest theories, received wisdom and rantings on how to achieve search engine results nirvana for your web site.

For many the game is all about gaining inbound links from authority web sites. For others the focus is on-page factors such as page title, meta tags and keyword density and placement. Many swear by trust factors, or domain and site age. Topic stability over time and other longevity factors. And so it goes.

The truth of course is there’s no one silver bullet or Secret. Yes these factors are all important elements in the collective mix, but unless you have very deep pockets it’s virtually impossible to focus on more than a couple of elements of search engine optimisation at a time.

The trick is to focus on the one which gives you most overall leverage and return for your limited resources.

So which one? For my money, the most reliable wisdom available on this question comes from two sources. The first is that to be found in the guidelines for webmasters published by the search engines themselves.

The second source is the collected thoughts and insights of seasoned veterans who’ve been in the game for many years and understand that being successful at it requires long term strategy, not quick fixes and short term tricks. Here’s just three sage examples:

The Keys to Online Success in Simple Equations and Links (SEOMoz)

Secrets to Beating the Sandbox 2.0 REVEALED: The Ultimate Guide (Andy Hagans)

SEO Advice: Writing Useful Articles That Readers Will Love (Matt Cutts)

And the common theme that emerges from these oracles is indisputably that Quality is King. As Google has famously urged:

Focus on the user and all else will follow.

Quality equals link-worthiness. Link-worthiness equals trust and popularity. Trust and popularity equals better search engine rankings, which equals better targeted and qualified traffic. Better targeted traffic served with high quality content should equal both better conversion rates and repeat visits. It’s a kind of virtuous circle.

Yes the other stuff is important, but when you boil it down a lot of those factors flow from taking care and paying attention when developing your content in the first place. For example, great keyword density and placement techniques are fine but are ultimately pointless unless the content built around them is compelling and persuausive to the end user.

It’s very hard to anticipate today how the search engines will evolve, how their algorithms will change, and what the impact will be on your rankings. What we can expect is that the evolution of search will continue to be in the direction of returning ever more relevant, trusted and refined search results to users.

That means webmasters need to take a long term view, focus on what they can influence, and optimize always for the user experience. Make sure what you publish now works for you in the search engine results for years to come. Play the game without resorting to shortcuts and educated guesses.

Take greater joy and pride in the web sites you build. In other words play to your strengths and focus on what you can influence, rather than on second-guessing what the search engines might or might not do.

And get started today.