Optimizing your web site for the search engines starts with your web site content and design.

Web Site Content
Your web site should be content rich with the keyword phrases that you feel surfers would type in to find a site like yours. What this means is...
Choose your keywords first! Instead of trying to put the cart before the horse;
designing a web site and then trying to make your keyword phrases work in just the Title Tags and Meta Tags...Make the whole package work together! The best thing you could do to help your web site placement in the search engines is to choose your keywords first and then design your web pages around them. This is the key to placing high on the search engines.

Web Site Design
Unfortunately, a lot of web sites are not designed with the search engines in mind. There are a number of design factors that should be taken into account to help your web site placement in the search engines.

Summary
If your web site is not getting the traffic it should, it's likely that it's not ranked well on the major search engines. You should coordinate the following to improve your search engine placement: Your keywords should appear in the Title Tag, Meta Tags and in the actual text of the web page (concentrate on the first paragraph on your page). Be sure the design of your web site is search engine friendly and if not, consider redesigning it so that it is.