While Google’s algorithm is somewhat of a mystery, their process of creating search results is relatively straight forward. Below is a quick overview, from start to finish, of how the search process works.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyCYyoGusqs[/youtube]
As is apparent in the video, the most important thing you can do to improve your search engine results is to produce quality content on your website. Not only will good content be indexed well, but your visitors will hopefully share your content, further improving your page rank.
If you liked this video, Google has a whole series of webmaster videos, you can click here to view the YouTube page. Some of the topics are advanced, while others are more simple.