Getting exposure to your website has more to do with marketing rather than Search Engine Optimization. Both are necessary, but driving traffic to your site has more impact on building long-term relationships.
One of the best methods of SEM is to write articles and have them posted on ezines that have a similar direction as your site. The search engines rate your site by the number of links coming back to your site (back-links) especially when your topics are the same.
One great resource to find ezines is the http://www.ezine-dir.com site. Another is going to http://selfgrowth.com. You’ll find authors that have ezines and will be more than happy to collaborate with you.
Another resource that I have used that is very successful is http://www.submitedge.com who will create three articles for you for $50 and submit them to all the ezines they can find that have a connection to your topic. It takes about six weeks, but you will definitely see a tremendous difference in the rankings of your website.
Last year I discovered Facebook and it has single handedly had the largest impact on my website rankings. And it’s affected all my sites, not just the ones with the links on Facebook.
The higher the ranking the more visibility, but beyond that, you’ll get noticed by others who can make a huge difference in your success.