I highly suggest you use Google Analytics or Woopra Analytics to monitor traffic coming into your website. With both services it is very easy to find out what keywords are bringing people to your site and this gives you the perfect opportunity to capitalize on what people are searching for. One of the most important things about SEO is delivering the right content to the people. Knowing what people want to know helps you achieve this.
Pillars and Supports
This concept has been around in various forms for a while now and many bloggers have talked about this idea. The idea is that you have your main pillar articles and then many support articles that all link back to the main pillar articles. A very simple concept that in my opinion works great for drawing traffic from search engines to the right places on your blog. For example if your main article that you want to rank for is called "How To Build a Tree house" then you may consider adding many smaller articles that are similar but all point readers to your main article. These could be things like "Materials Needed for Building a Tree house" and "Building a Tree house Plans". Even if you planned your pillars and supports very well analytics adds an important aspect in expanding on this idea and I think this is where you can really pinpoint your SEO practices to bring targeted results. When studying analytics you may find that someone came to your main "How to Build a Tree house" article using a keyword you never thought of like "Tree house Trapdoor Ideas". I suggest that you then write an article purely on this subject and of course link back to the main article. I believe this kind of micro management of SEO will help get your blog spread far and wide in the search engines and catering for a wider range of potential visitors.
