Many of my clients are asking me how they can make their websites rank high in search engines. Sadly, there is no magic button to push to make your site come up on page one. While the websites I build are search engine optimized - meaning they have search engine friendly URLS (the address that appears in the box at the top of your browser), you can update easily and often, have site maps and more - the keywords that you use on your site can really make a difference. You need to use your keywords on your site and use them OFTEN. When someone types in one of your keywords on top search engines like Google, Bing,Yahoo, AOL and Ask! they look to see how many times that keyword  appears on the pages of your website. They also look to see what percentage of total words on your site that keyword accounts for. (They also look for how many sites link to your site, how large your site is and how often it's updated).

Once your website is live, you need to make sure that you update your content often using the keywords you think people will use to find your site. Here is an easy 7 step program to help you do just that.

1. Find out where you rank. I like to use SEObook.com's Rank Checker. They have a few other free tools, along with subscription based SEO help.
2. Find out what keywords your competition uses. You can do this by checking their meta data by view the page source of their website. In FireFox, go to VIEW and PAGE SOURCE. Some sites skip meta data all together and rely solely on keyword density within their site content. You can use SEObook's SEO Toolbar to check for the top words used on their site. If they are smart, like you, their keywords will have the highest pecentage of the total words used on their site. Google also has a keyword tool.
3. Decide on your keywords. Search engines only look at the top 20-25 keywords you list in your meta data, so adding more than that is unnecessary. I would choose 10-12 to start and you may even find you'll want to narrow that down.
4. Incorporate those into your page. Use your keywords EVERYWHERE. In your blog, in your photo descriptions, in your blog tags, in your image names. EVERYWHERE. The easiest way to do this is to blog often about content relevant to your site. If you are a dog trainer, blogging about tips and tricks using the words "dog" and "train" will help your keyword density and it means you have to update your site often, which search engines like. No one likes static, old content!
5. Check the percentage of words on your site your keywords make up. You can use SEObook's SEO Toolbar for this. It generates any sites top "keywords" by density - meaning the words that show up the most. If the competition is using SEO - the keywords they have chosen should be the most "dense" words on their site.
6. Submit your site to search engines. Links to add your URL to: Google, Bing, Yahoo!
   
7. Repeat.

Check out this link for more basic SEO info.