SEO and Joomla - What is the best tool?

In this morning's email, from a friend and occasional client:

"What Joomla tool do you recommend, to be able to have a site in the first positions of the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query?"

I sat a few moments thinking about this, and re read the question several times. What follows is the answer I gave.

It's not really a question of tools, although there are some that are useful...

I get my understanding of the topic from occasional trips to Google's Webmaster Tools.

Everyone WANTS to believe that the are "shortcuts"... "Why can't I just pay some money to someone and wake up tomorrow ranked high on Google (I need first page, please... HIGH on First page if it isn't too much bother)".

The truth is, there are no short cuts... You read it right - NO shortcuts.

The only thing one can do that makes sense is to research how people find the highly ranked sites with which you wish to compete, and do whatever it is they do BETTER than they do it. Now that makes it sound IMPOSSIBLE, but in reality, it isn't, and often, it really isn't even difficult.

Your client must know who he is trying to reach, and how that "person" finds what he's looking for on the internet. He must then make sure that his new website has original content relevant to his target's interests AND that the content is thoroughly indexed by Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Once he has done this, he gets to do it some more. And then even more, until your client is the one people are trying to beat.

In some ways, I wish there were a tool for you to buy... In other ways, I'm glad there isn't.