how do you get your site to the top of google?

Just wondering how google works out what site will get to the top in its results, is it based on how many hits the site gets?

also if your running a personal web server can you register this in search engines, do you need to register a dns or something?

cheers.

Google is a complicated method involving the actual text on your page, related links going out, related link coming in from other pages/sites, etc. To get it to the top of the list takes more then keywords. There was a document on the Google evaluation for rankings. I'll see if I can post the link or document.

Found it.

http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html


And here for everything else you may need.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/