A higher rank means more visitors, and more visitors mean more sales, or more advertising revenue Just put the phrase(s) you want to rank well for in the <title></title> tag and in at least one other area on the page. For some reason this isn't obvious to everyone: I can't remember how many times someone has sought my advice about how to rank well for some phrase, and I check out their page and that phrase is nowhere to be found! A while back a friend asked me how to get her homepage to rank well for her name, which was unusual enough that she should have been at the top of Google with no problems. After I checked out her page I felt like asking her, "And it didn't occur to you to put your name somewhere on that page?!" Actually, her name was on her page, but in a graphic. Google can't read that, they have no idea what words are contained in an image. And her <title> tag just said "Home". How is Google supposed to know that her page was about Sally Thunderpizza? (Not her real name.)
So anyway, for non-competitive phrases, just put the phrases you want to rank for in the <title> and in the body copy of your page. For example, you should be able to get to #1 in Google within a month for the phrase martian pudding headache. Go ahead, try it.
Okay, but what if your phrase is competitive? Then you're going to need to make your site worthy of ranking well. Think about it: When you search Google, don't the best sites for your search phrase usually come up first? Do you think that's an accident, or coincidence? Hell no. Google wants to list the best sites first, because if Google returns bad sites then people will start using Yahoo or Bing instead.
Getting to the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages) means earning it. Getting to the top is not about trying to trick the search engines. The engines are constantly tweaking their formulas, so today's trick won't work tomorrow anyway. And trying to stay on top of the tricks takes more time than simply making your site worthy of a good ranking well in the first place.
Most sites are either "stores" (selling something) or "magazines" (offering free articles, and making their money from ads). Let's take these one at a time. If you're running a store, think about what would make your store outstanding:
Low prices, or super-high-quality products (depending on the audience you're targeting)
Large selection
Friendly, responsive customer service
Easy ordering process
Tons of information about the products you sell (answering every question a would-be shopper could have about the products)
Customer reviews of the products
Doing something better than your competitors. After all, if you don't do anything better than your competitors, then why should you rank higher than them?
For "magazine" sites that offer articles:
Try to create two new articles every week. If you can't do that, try to do one page each week. At a bare minimum, create a new article each month.
As much as possible, your new articles should be unique, interesting, authoritative, and compelling. If you want to rank well for the phrase electric widgets, then make your site the best resource about electric widgets available.
And for both flavors of sites:
Write a <TITLE></TITLE> tag for each page that accurately describes that page (no more than about 64 characters).
Make sure all of your pages are accessible through normal <A HREF> links (i.e., don't use JavaScript or Flash links exclusively).
Link to quality relevant sites. After you do so, ask those sites to link to you, but don't make your link to them contingent on whether they link back.
Follow standard website design tips and avoid the problems listed on Problem Websites. Your site should be not only attractive, but super-easy to use, and completely free of annoyances.
Most importantly, purge your mind of trying to think of ways you can "trick" your way to the top of the results. Do NOT think about the specific nuts and bolts of how a search engine will rank your pages. Instead, build good, quality pages for your visitors, and trust that the rankings will follow.
But many webmasters don't get this. They write to me asking such things as:
How many times should my keywords appear on my pages?
What's the optimum ratio of keywords to non-keywords?
Should I seek links from several PR4 sites or one PR6 site?
Will doing [insert some trick here] cause me to rank higher?
Such webmasters are missing the point. You get good rankings by building a quality site, not by trying to figure out exactly how the search engines rank pages. It's counter-intuitive, but you get good rankings by ignoring rankings and focusing on quality. Focus on quality and the rankings will follow. It works the same way in business: If you focus on the money you'll probably make less money. But if you focus on creating a great customer experience then the money will follow.