The best part of SEO (off page) can be done by a websites owner or employees that are un technical. There isnt any great secret in gaining PR and improving your position in Google.
Bascially you need to gain as many targeted inbound links to your site as possible. Search engines like google will see websites linking to your website as a reccomendation for your site and will award you credit based on various factors such as...
Anchor text of the link (you should try and make it the keyword you are targeting).
Position of the link on the website (Top of the homepage is best position)
Number of outbound links on the site (If a website is linking to many sites instead of just one, it dilutes any credit given dramatically).
The ranking that the website has itself (If a highly ranked site links to you, SE's will rightly give you more credit than if a low ranked site links to you).
Getting inbound links and following the above rules is the key part to any SEO campaign. Links should be added little and often; if one day your site has no links and the next day it has a 1000 it is quite clear you are buying links and you wont be awarded any credit for these links. It takes time but the results are worth it.
There are many ways to get inbound links without doing any work. Syndicated content, Article submissions, press releases etc. After the content is submitted in each of these cases, the use of the content around the internet will slowly grow and in each case its used, will link to your site and give you SE credit.
Using the above technique and no on page optimization ive managed to achieve 2nd position for the keyword "business cards" on google. That is a highly competitive keyword with many millions of webpages/sites competing for it.
Hope this is of some help.
