here's a tip i got in my faves
first put some keywords into the "alt" tag when you have a banner at the top of your site.
and this may be an old trick. but i read that since bots read left to right that if you have your site set-up with a menu or links on the left side of your website, then this is what gets indexed first, the links.
<table width="450" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="2">Banner and Alt Text here - with keywords </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="122">
<p>Table of Contents</p>
<ul>
<li>Link 1</li>
<li>Link 2</li> <- This gets indexed first (after the alt text)
<li>Link 3</li>
<li>etc </li>
</ul>
</td>
<td width="311" valign="top">
<p>Main Content.</p>
<p>Here's where your content goes. This is what
you really want to get indexed by the search
engines </p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
you really want the content spidered first, so it's best to either leave the top left table row blank.
<table width="450" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1">
<tr>
<td colspan="2">Banner and Alt Text here - with keywords </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="124">
</td>
<td width="309" rowspan="2" valign="top">
<p>Main Content.</p> <- All this gets indexed first
<p>Here's where your content goes. This is what
you really want to get indexed by the search
engines </p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>Table of Contents</p>
<ul>
<li>Link 1</li>
<li>Link 2</li>
<li>Link 3</li>
<li>etc</li>
</ul>
</td>
</tr>
</table>