Hi cristinsmith45

The comments above are all correct. Be sure to educate yourself on Google's Guidelines, as The Old Sarge pointed out.

I would like to point out some specifics -

1. Create your own unique, high quality content that visitors find useful. Do not use article spinners or paraphrase or "borrow" other people's content.

2. Create your site for visitors. Seek to make them happy and help them by providing information they seek. Do not create your site for search engines.

3. Do not engage in spammy link campaigns or overuse backlinks to drive your pages' SERPs positions. Rely more upon making your visitors happy.

4. Do not overuse advertising on your pages or overload your site or pages with affiliate links.

5. Don't engage in any practices that manipulate search engines.

There's probably more, but those cover a lot of area.

Good luck!