First you need to get your site into google, yahoo, msn etc. Most of the big search engines will have a link submission page, so submit your homepage to these to get yourself in. Ive put a link for googles one below:
Add your URL to Google
Remember the more relevant to the search the better.
Choose a couple of keywords for your site, words that you would like to type into a search engine and for your site to come up.
Once you have these, do some research on competitors, actually search these keywords, take the top 3 that come up and have a look at there sites, see how many times they have used the keyword in there content, you need to have it more times then them. People might disagree but every little helps, people dont belive in meta tags but fill them anyway because you never no.
Also type site:
www.yourcompetitorswebsite.com into google and search, it will show you all sites which link to that competitor and if you think about it, all those sites which link back must be helping because there top. So try and get yourself some backlinks from those sites, most will prob be directories.
hope this helps.
p.s top post really good stuff