how to get on the first page of search engine results

A lot of my work in the past year has dealt with search engine optimization issues. A lot of sites start off with a bang, but don't follow through on how they are going to maintain the momentum of being in the news, essentially of coming up on the first page of the search engine results. There are a ton of companies that promise to help boost lagging results, the number of results for something like best seo software will show you just how competitive the market is, but the rule is to to stick with a company that has some kind of specialization in your field. That's the number one way to make sure you will get your money's worth.