A great thread has been started on sitepoint giving you a guide optimizing your website for search engines.

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361403

Before you write one line of code:

• Do keyword research to determine what keywords you want to target

While constructing your website you should do the following:

• Use markup to indicate the content of your site

• Optimize your ‘title’ tags on each page to contain 1 - 3 keywords
• Create unique Meta Tags for each page
• Use header tags appropriately (H1 - H2 - H3)
• Use ’strong’ and ‘em’ tags if appropriate

Optimize your URLs

• Use Search Engine Friendly URLs (for dynamic sites)
• Use keywords in your domain (http://www.keyword1.com/)
• Use keywords in your URL
  (http://www.example.com/keyword2/keyword3.html)

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• Use dashes instead of underscores to separate words in your URLs (keyword2-keyword3.html)

Optimize your content

• Use keywords liberally yet appropriately throughout each page
• Have unique content
• Have quality content

Use search engine friendly design

• Create a human sitemap
• Do not use inaccessible site navigation (JavaScript menus)
• Minimized outbound links
• Kept your pages under 100K in size

Design the navigational structure of the site to channel PR to main pages (especially the homepage)

Create a page that encourages webmasters to link to your site

• Provide them the relevant HTML to create their link to you
• Provide them with any images you may want them to use (although text links are better)

Make sure your website is complete before launching it

Immediately after launching your site you should do the following:

Submit your site to all major search engines

• Google (Use a Google SiteMap)
• Yahoo (Use the page list option)
• MSN (Finds your site via incomming links)
• Ask (Finds your site via incomming links)

Submit your site to all free directories

• DMOZ (also powers Google Directory)
• JoeAnt

Submit your site to relevant directories

• Find more at ISEDB

Begin a link building campaign (attempting to get keywords in the link anchor text)

• Put a link to your website in your forum signatures
• Reply to relevant blog posts (Don’t spam please)
• Submit articles to relevant websites

If you will pay to promote your website:

Submit your site to pay directories

• Yahoo
• GoGuides

Purchase text links from high PR (Pagerank) sites related to your site

Finally, as part of an ongoing strategy:

Continually update your website will quality, unique content

Continually seek free links preferably from sites in your genre

Do NOT do the following:

Make an all Flash website (without an HTML alternative)

Use JavaScript for navigation

Spam other websites for incomming links

Launch your site before it is done

Use duplicate content

• Point several domains to one site without using a 301 redirect

Use markup inappropiately

• Style ‘h’eader tags to look like regular text
• Hide content using ‘display: hidden’ (for the sake of hiding text)

Use other “black hat” techniques (unless you accept the risk - Banning)

• Doorway/Landing pages
• Cloaking
• Hidden text
• Keyword stuffing

Additional Tips:

Usable and accessible sites tend to be search engine friendly by their very nature

Be patient! High rankings don’t happen overnight

Don’t obsess with any one search engine. They are all worth your attention.

Also mentioned is this very useful tool: http://www.nichebot.com/