Optimize your blog for searches; get out in public.

Theres really no definite answer to doing this. to be quite honest, Myself and a lot of others "experiment" with many different techniques for optimizing our blogs to appear in searches. Many of the ideas I have covered relate to optimization.
Building in-bound links, the more links in to your site help your page rank(how high in google you are). Thats why exchanging links, and advertising; posting in forums. All great ideas. Also fill your site with keyword rich content. keywords are used in determining which search you show up in.

Keywords is a huge topic in itself. heres a wikipedia page on keywords.

Meta Tags are also useful, though i am unsure of just how important they are any more. use the title,description, and keywords tags in the head of your page (Edit HTML under the layout tab).

Also when you write a post, if you are using blogger, add some good words to the labels box, those are important in influencing the keyword, searches your blog appears in, and also have seemed to have some effect on the advertisements displayed by Adsense on your blog. (At least that is what I have observed on my blog; I cant guarantee It will work that way for all of us.)