Hi hari,
If you are truly a newbie, you will want to start with a program like Internet Business Promoter 10 which will run an analysis for you. It is best to go through what the program outputs, and verify certain aspects of the analysis to be sure.
What it does is checks your page on the site, then compares it to the websites that are ranked top 10 in your desired search engine for the keyphrase you are wanting. It tells you what those sites are doing that yours is not. This is a good start, but to gain top 10 rankings it will require allot of tedious work such as link building, publishing articles with your link on various free press release websites, etc.
Good luck!