Search Engine Optimization has two distinct areas the first being On-page optimization and the second, off-page optimization. On-page optimization is what you can actually do to your website that will affect your ranking on the search engines. This includes changing your title tags, H1 Tags etc. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) like anything else adheres to the 80/20 rule, whereby on-page optimization accounts for 20% of search engine rankings.
The other 80% comes from link building, which is by far the hardest part when it comes to SEO. Link building is getting other sites to link back to your own website. Like everything else in the world, links have varying degrees of quality, you get really poor quality links which can actually harm your website or you can get excellent links which will help your rankings tremendously. Obviously, the best quality links are the hardest to obtain. For your information, the best kind of links to get, are links that come from Universities or Government websites. Search Engines love these links and if you do manage to get one your website will almost certainly help get your website on to the first page within a couple of...