hi, all very wise words indeed - SEO is a black art.

I am a front page winner... for the word polygonsoup.

In terms of SEO, your question was only half complete - you should be asking to be top for specific search terms - it'll be nice for you, but not very likely that a social network for dog lovers would be top of google for space exploration or deep sea mining. Being 'first page' is a balance of keywords, SEO, marketing and competition - anyone can be first page as I have demonstrated, see more but only for extremely rear or unique keywords - (google & yahoo are prime examples or these - respectively)... unfortunately unique keywords sledome make sence and the very fact they are unique mean s you need to sell the brand and even then people head direclty to your branded site and by-pass search engines altegerther - when was the last time you search google for yahoo (or nike, coke-cola) - never happens.

This may seam very obvious but you must remember that computers don't really understand 'obvious' they also don't understand fame, sex or cash (their owners may well do though).

The simple truth is that every site owner wants to be top - not just those with the big budgets and smart webmasters working 24/7on this very issue. Even when you are as big as yahoo and google you don't BOTH get to be number 1.

You should think very carefully about your specific and unique selling points are, who your audience is and what your competition are doing rightly & wrongly with their SEO - then implement their successes, learn from their mistakes and and focus on being the biggest fish in your pond and one day you may indeed breach the levy, swim in the ocean and be frontpage news - but fearful of the sharks out there.