Keys to successful SE placement?

[tgmjr]

I've been reading through almost 7 pages of this forum and haven't found enough information on what I'm looking for. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, I don't know.

So my question is. What exactly are the keys to getting good SE placement? Specifics would be great. What META tags are ones you should use? What keywords should I use? Popular ones? Not so popular ones? How many? What other tricks of the trade are there that SEO people get paid to do for you. I understand that if you don't want to give out your secrets or anything, but any and all help would be much appreciated, and please, don't limit your suggestions and comments to just the questions I've asked. If looking at my site would help, it's in my signature.

The reason I'm asking is because I've had very good success with obtaining traffic, just not SE traffic or productive traffic. I've only had 3 sign-ups from twistys.com and I've gotten almost 95k uniques this month.

Once again, thanks for taking the time to read and reply to this thread.