In part, you pay $ for the privelage.

How do you think Google make so much money to bur for all those servers!

There are a lot of tricks, and the algorythm keeps changing. It comes from how many sites are linked to you, keywords, meta tags, marketing and good product. In short you cannot buy it you need to work for it.

There are plenty of "tricks," some of which will get you banned from Google altogether.

If you're serious about your business, then be smart about improving your search engine rank. Don't just shell out a few hundred dollars to some spam email you get that promises top ranking on Google. You might as well flush your greenbacks down the toilet.

Find a skilled and reputable developer who has experience in SEO/SEM. For example, I have a friend here in S. FL who is a developer and who has studied SEO and the sites he develops rank highly for his clients. He knows how to properly code the sites, how to employ link backs, how to craft the right content, etc. When it's done well the payoff is a good solid ranking. He charges about $2-3K for an SEO optimized site. Is that a lot? I don't know - how much is your business worth? What are your goals for the site?

Just a few things to think about.

Oh, one more thing he's also taught me-
He does a keyword analysis. If you're keywords are very popular keywords, like "blogs" or "music" then chance are you're not going to appear on the first page because of the sheer volume of sites who are also competing for those keywords. Creating a keyword strategy is part of SEO.

you want Search Engine Optimization

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEO

That will be a good place to start... remember, with Google especially, "to not try to game the system." They will punish you, HARD if they catch you cheating for rankings...