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When you are optimizing your website you must first and foremost look at the general search engine guidlines. These are best looked at as a outline of what every major search engine. Yes these "search engine rules" are brief but this is the basics.

Search Engine Guidelines

Create your website pages for visitors not search engines.
Do not try and trick search engines for better rankings.
Don't add your link or send a link to websites that are questionable. This can affect your rating and blacklist your site.
Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, programs like WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to search engines may improve your site positioning in the short-term but they can cripple your changes in the long-term.
Invisible links are Bad. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
Don't employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.
Don't send automated queries to Search engines.
Don't load pages with irrelevant words.
Don't create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
Hand submit your site to search engines
Input accurate content in metta-tags
Search engines can not read JavaScript
Search engines will not follow dynamic links

This information was found at google set as Google's recommendations for SEO

Ok now we are going to get a little more in-depth. If you can't handle the information or if it seems too mind boggling or if you just don't want to mess anything up then I suggest you find a good Internet Marketing Company to help you out. But before you send a check always ask for references and take a look at their portfolio of completed work, you should be able to find out very fast if the sites they claim to have worked on are ranked well or not. Also stay away from guaranteed ranking companies. No third party individual or company can guarantee a top 20 ranking period! The companies that make these claims just post your website in sponsored ads and say that you are at the top of search engines - but the second you stop paying they will take you off the sponsored ads and you will be right back where you started but with less capital to spend on a legitimate SEO company.

Search Engine Optimization 101
The very first thing you do when working with your site is to make sure it has great content on every page. People and search engines love content. And as your first rule of thumb always optimize a site for people not search engines. If you keep this rule the search engines will be right behind you and as they continue to improve crawling methods they will give you the desired ranking.

Optimizing Your Images "alt" Attribute

Did you know that any images on your page can help your listings too? Each image on your page can include a keyword phrase or two that relates to the image. This text will also show up & help those that may have their images turned off when visiting your site. This does not work for all engines, but it certainly does not hurt so we recommend you give it a try where you can.

What it looks like:

<IMG SRC="SubmitItLogo.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="Submit It! Web Site Submission Service">

Where it belongs:

You can add the "alt" attribute to any image on your page.

Tag limits:

We do not recommend using more than a brief sentence or two to describe an image.

Tag tips:

Be sure to use the keyword phrases that you also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags.
Do not try to cram a bunch of keywords into the "alt" attribute. We recommend using no more than 2-3 per image.
Describe the image - do not just list keywords.
The "alt" attribute is also a good place for misspellings and plural keyword phrases that you may not have used elsewhere.

*Content, Optimizing Your Page Copy

The copy on your page is also very important in order to achieve better search engine listings. Actually, it is very close to being as important as your title tag so make sure you keep reading! By 'copy' we mean the actual text that a visitor to your site would read.

What are your
customers searching for?

Optimize your page text for the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be wasted.

Our keyword research tool can tell you the exact words they are using in the search engines.

Don't guess -- know what they are searching for.

Did you know that just like a visitor to your site would read the copy on your page to figure out what you have to offer, the search engines do too? And what do you think the search engines are looking for when they 'read' your page copy? Keyword phrases, of course!

Page text tips:

For best results we recommend that each page you submit has at least 200 words of copy on it. There is some cases where this much text can be difficult to put on a page, but the search engines really like it so you should do your best to increase the amount of copy where you can.
This text should include your most important keyword phrases, but should remain logical & readable.
Be sure to use those phrases that you have used in your other tags (i.e. metas, alt, headings, title, etc.) during the optimization process.
Add additional copy filled pages to your site. For example, how-to articles, tips or tutorials. These types of content pages not only help you in the search engines, but many other sites will link to them too.
Don't ignore this tip! Seriously, optimizing your page copy is one of the most important things you could possibly do to improve your listings in the search engines. So, make sure you have plenty of it even if you need to redesign your site to work it in!

Optimizing Your Meta Tags

Meta tags were originally created to help search engines find out important information about your page that they might have had difficulty determining otherwise. For example, related keywords or a description of the page itself.

Many people incorrectly believe that good meta tags are all that is needed to achieve good listings in the search engines, which is entirely incorrect. While meta tags are usually always part of a well optimized page they are not the be all and end all of optimizing your pages. In the early days of the web people were able to get great listings from optimizing just their meta tags, but the increasing competition for good search engine listings eventually led to many people spamming the search engines with keyword stuffed meta tags. The result is that the engines have changed what they look at when they rank a web page.

The search engines now usually look at a combination of several the to determine your listings, not just your metas - some don't even look at them at all! What this means is that your page should have a combination of all our tips implemented on your page - not just meta tags. That being said, there are two meta tags that can help your search engine listings - meta keywords & meta description.

What they look like:

Description Meta:
<META NAME="description" content="This would be your description of what is on your page. Your most important keyword phrases should appear in this description.">

Keywords Meta:
<META NAME="keywords" content="keywords phrase 1, keyword phrase 2, keyword phrase 3, etc.">

Where they belong:

The correct placement for both meta tags is between the <HEAD> and </HEAD> tags within the HTML the makes up your page. Their order does not really matter, but most people usually place the description first then the keywords meta.

Tag limits:

We recommend that your Keywords Meta not exceed 1024 characters including spaces.
We recommend that your Description Meta tag not exceed 250 characters including spaces.

Meta description tips:

Make sure you accurately describe the content of your page while trying to entice visitors to click on your listing.
Include 3-4 of your most important keyword phrases. Especially those used in your title tag and page copy.
Try to have your most important keywords appear at the beginning of your description. This often brings better results, and will help avoid having any search engine cut off your keywords if they limit the length of your description.

Meta keywords tips:

Aside from what we mention in the other tips below you should only use those keyword phrases that you also used in the copy of your page, title tag, meta description, and other tags. Any keywords phrases that you use that do not appear in your other tags or page copy are likely to not have enough prominence to help your listings for that phrase.
Don't forget plurals. For example, a travel site might have both "caribbean vacation" and "caribbean vacations" in their keyword meta tag to make sure they show up in both searches.
If you know of a common misspelling of a popular keyword that could be used to find your site you should enter it in your keywords meta tag. For example, a travel site might use "caribean " in their keyword meta since it is a common misspelling for "caribbean".
Watch out for repeats! You want to include your most important phrases, but when doing so it can be difficult not to repeat one word many times. For example, "caribbean vacation" and "caribbean vacations" are two different phrases, but the word "caribbean" appears twice. This is okay to do in order to make sure you get the phrases you need in there, but becareful not to repeat any one word excessively. There in no actual limit, but we recommend that no one word be repeated in the keyword meta more than 5 times.
If your site has content of interest to a specific geographic location be sure to include the actual location in your keyword meta.

Also see the Step by Step guidelines to Internet Marketing.