Getting a high ranking in major search engines is something that can often be achieved by putting in a lot of hard work and "love for the game". It's not just about optimising your website as best as you can but it's a mix of hundreds of variables. Once you have achieved a good ranking, the problem becomes how to stay on top, as your website is competing with thousands of others.

Basically, as of this point it will be going through the same steps over and over again until you get some satisfying results.

First of all, make sure your website is registered with the engines you care about. Visit the search engine and search for your url. If you're not registered keep trying as it may take several submissions before you get registered.

Another thing you have to do is to track the visitors to your website. There are many stats and tracking programs that can help you with this. These statistics will give you a lot of valuable information such as what keywords people used to find your site, which search engines referred them? What pages they visited? This information will help you determine whether or not you have optimised your website for the right keywords and phrases, or if you need to change things around.

Also keep the content on your website fresh. Update regularly with new information to encourage visitors to come back to your website.

Keep in mind that all search engines rank your website differently and use different algorithms. The attached overview will give you some idea.

Search Engine	Content and location	HTML Title	Meta tags	Keyword Density	Link popularity	Summary
AltaVista Search Engine	Keywords that appear at the top of the page are given higher priority	Very important, should be different for every page	AltaVista likes the use of the Meta Description tag and Title Tag	Important	Important	keywords in title, description metatag, keywords appearing at the top of the page and keywords close together.
Open Directory Project (powers alltheweb, AltaVista, Gigablast, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut)	Editors determine if your site gets listed in the directory.	Important. Make sure the title is short and describes what the website is all about.	Description and keywords are important.	Not important	Not important for DMOZ, but is Important, for some of its partners, who use Inktomi	Make sure your title and description are accurate and precise, and are the same as on the website. Pick approriate category.
Google	Keywords should be close to each other. Content should include keywords in text or links	Keyword or keyword phrase should be in title	The Meta description tag often appears in search results and is an important tag.	Not mentioned	Very important, especially from popular websites.	Link popularity, keywords near each other, keywords in title and link text, themes, bold and large fonts.
Inktomi	Keywords should appear at top of page and in the content.	Very important	Very important, both description and keywords	Very important (standard requirements are 3-7%)	Site linkage is very Important	Keyword density and site linkage are most important.
MSN Search Engine	Important. Place descriptive content at top of page	Important, should contain keywords	The meta description and keywords tag often appear in search results and are important	Important	Important	Web page content, the number and quality of websites that link to your website, and the relevance of your website’s content to keywords are most important.
Yahoo Directory	Editors determine if your site gets listed in the directory.	Important	Description and keywords play a role.	No	No information	Make sure your title and description are accurate and precise, and are the same as on the website. Pick approriate category.
Search Engine	Content and location	HTML Title	Meta tags	Keyword Density	Link popularity	Summary

If with time you feel your website is still not ranking very well in the search engines, start over with the optimization process. Change your keywords around, maybe choose other very specific keywords so you don't have as much competition and you're targeting better.