Providing quality information
Giving your visitors what they are looking for is a good start, but there are other things you need to consider when writing your content as well, such as providing quality information. Quality information is more than just answering a question; it is answering it well. If you can provide better content for your targeted keyword phrase than anyone else, people will link to your page just because you have great content. This will make it much easier for you to get ranked in the search engines.
Perhaps you are targeting How to tie a tie, for example. You've written step-by-step instructions and either drawn illustrations or taken photographs to show each step. That's good, but you can easily make it better by including a video as well. Now, your visitors can decide for themselves whether they'd rather read the instructions, or watch them. That is quality, and after your visitor gets done tying his/her tie, he/she might just share your post on Facebook or Twitter...