All you need to know about SEO: Create good content that people want to link to, make sure you follow html best practices that have been around since the 90s.
I’m constantly bombarded by SEO spam to SEO my wife’s site. She just writes content, frequently and have genuine activity and ranks higher than all her competitors who SEO like crazy, but whose sites are vapid.
Granted, would likely get more traffic with SEO, but it’s better, I think, to put energy into real, useful pages. Rather than trying to trick users or outtrick other sites.