There is a lot of misinformation flying around on this topic so I have decided to put down these guidelines/steps for you to follow to increase a website's traffic and search engine rankings.
Make sure your site has valuable unique content and products/services. Position your primary and secondary keywords within the first twenty-five words of your page's content and also spread them throughout the document.
You need to perform a thorough keyword research to discover and use the right keywords or phrases to attract your target customers. The right keywords are the ones used by these same customers when searching for you or your service or product on the internet.
Use these keywords in the right fields and places on your web site, like Title, META tags, Headers, for example.
Keep your website's design simple so as make it easier for your visitors to navigate between its pages, find what they want and buy your products/services.
A mistake I see and hear very often is when people submit just the home page tot the search engines and directory services. It is more efficient if you submit multiple pages from your website. This will improve the rankings for all those pages and ultimately your website as a whole. Do not use any automated submission service, you must do this manually or outsource it if you do not have the time/inclination to do it yourself. Make sure this is a manual submission. The search engines frown upon automated submissions so this point cannot be over emphasized.
Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes as they get changed from time to time without any announcements. You have to keep up with these changes and modify your web pages accordingly so your search engine ranking remains high.
There is a wide variety of online tools and utilities that you can use to assess how your website is doing on a regular basis. They will tell you what you are doing wrong with your website. You will also do well to keep track of your competitor’s websites as well as other top ranked websites. For those that appear higher than you on the search engines, you can check what they are doing and try to do the same. This is in the areas of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
Analyze reports and logs from your web hosting service provider to see where your traffic is coming from. Also, from the same reports, analyze your visitor's locations and how they get to your site, whether from search engines or links from other sites. Keep track of the keywords they used to find you as well.
Make your customers' browsing experience very easy and provide numerous ways for them to remember you such as newsletters, money-off coupons, free reports etc
Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or to article banks so you are recognized as an authority in your field.
If you sell or plan to sell anything from your website, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy. If need be, outsource it or hire professionals. This may seem costly, but it is a lot cheaper than paying for a website which no one visits.
Lastly, don’t make the very common mistake of building your website and thinking you do not need to change/update it ever again. It will look like a shop where nothing has ever been sold and is covered in dust, you probably will not buy anything there. Instead, treat it like a dynamic, constantly changing sales tool, like a real physical store. If not, it will only go further down the search engine rankings into obscurity.