1. Keyword Research

If you think about SEO - you should say before "keyword research". Many SEO companies forget about this ,they always are hurry to monetize their effort fast.

So, you have two choices, you can look for tools witch cost much or hire company who cares about your real needs (traffic).

On the begining you can use some free tools ,but you have to remember they have some limitations, for example Google Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

This is the tool whitch can shows you how popular are keywords, how many searches generates in search engine, but that kind of tools can`t shows you exact amount of CLICKS possible clicks if you will get 1st page of Google for specific keyword ,or AdSense earnings (CPC) ,but anyway it shows you valuable data about popularity, what is worth of your effort and money to promote in Search Engine.

2. Optimized Content

Google likes CONTENT, unique and valuable content, bot and human they likes it much, that fore you have to make your website interesting for readers, without it no one will stay on your site longer than few seconds.

You have to remember to optimize your content for keywords you will promote, content should contain all the keywords you want to promote, otherwise your effort will be nothing more than wasting of your precious time. Keywords should be 5-7% of all text content.

3. Web Site Optimization

Google Crawler reads only  HTML ,so you have to put keywords in Title, Keywords and Description areas. You should put some keywords inside H1 to H6 too. If you have any images on your website you should place the tags wherever you can.

4. Articles

It means you should start promotion of your website from puting some articles about your website on the sites like ezinearticles.com etc.

5. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites called in other words WEB 2.0 are very important part of web promotion today, because everyone using today services like DIGG or DELICIOUS etc. That services generates a lot of traffic to your website with little effort from you.

Google likes that kind of sites therefore you have to put there some links to your site with little description and keywords.

But remember that techniques can`t guarantee you 1st page of Google for keywords which shows more than 100 000 results in Google. For more competetive keywords you should hire Professionals like SEO COMPANY, because they have pro tools to promote your keywords and big expirience.