Top 5 ways to rank higher in search engines.
1. Good content
2. Quality inbound links with a pr of 2 or higher
3. Generic Keywords (Use your primary keyword, the one that will be searched for the most and use it in your headings, and content area. You should also have atleast two other sub primary keywords to use. )
Example: My keywords: iPod, iPods, iPod applications (Make sure to bold your keywords in the content area.)
My Heading 'Apple releases SDK for iPod'
My content area
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla iPod bla bla bla bla bla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla bla iPod applications bla bla blabla bla blabla bla bla iPods bla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla blabla bla bla
4. Good Code - With CSS you can now seperate your images from your content, thus making it that much easier for search engines to find your content.
5. Heading tags - They were created for a reason. Using heading tags is a great way to tell Search Engines what his more important from the other. H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6,H7
Other methods:
Using your site url in your signature at major forums - It's free advertising, inbound links, and a great way to get your site across to the masses. A few great web design message boards are http://forums.digitalpoint.com, http://namepros.com, http://sitepoint.com. These three forum communities are constantly being crawled with search engine bugs.
Title and alt tag - People intend to forget to use these two tags on there images a lot.
Update your site often - Google likes it when you update your site with fresh content.