I came across this article about youtube ditching its fivestar rating basically because users treat it as a binary thing, either they love it (5 stars) or hate it (0 stars) or simply dont bother voting, there are some edge cases where users DO bother voting however.

more here... http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.h...

The key ingredient here is links, we all know that lots of incoming links from half-decent sites works.

Once you have chosen your keyword target/market it's time to get building, honestly all you need is a few pages interlinked with some content, with a couple of outgoing links to any various site that google engine can atleast think your site is related to the 'real world'.