For example:  I am a lawyer in Houston Tx specializing in Real Estate law.  

If a potential client were to search on  Altavista  Google 
Metacrawler  and MSN SEARCH using
lawyer     Houston   tx    real estate
how could I satisfy the 4 search engines' different requirements in
the title, keywords, meta tags, links, etc , in order for all 4 of the
above search engines to return my site in the first or second result
page?
Is it possible?  How?  I am so sorry but I am broke and can only offer
a small price.

If you are broke, let me give you some pieces of advice for free: 

* If someone promises you to put you on the first results of a search
engine, especially Google and especially for this kind of keywords
(not somehing totally rare, nor the name of your business) - the are
LYING. No-one can ensure this - in the best case, very good
professionals can ensure one to be on the first page of the results.

* One way to ensure (at Google) that you'd be on the first page - even
if you are not well linked - is to buy AdWords. You won't be at the
results (but above the results), but you'll certainly be there.

* I suggest, for many other advices, that you'll search this site for
terms like : SEO, "first page" + Google, metatags, keywords, etc.
There are many advices (including some I've given)

Everything below this paragraph, is copied from another post I made. 
I still believe this to be relevant information.  If you can find a
SEO company that doesn't emphasize exploiting all the flaws of each
search engine and creating doorway pages and other cheap nonsense,
they should be at the top of your list of companies to check.  Not
only will skipping all of the cheating save you a lot of time and
money (less updating required to keep from dropping down a few pages
after each algorithm update), but your average rank (per time, as
things do fluxuate) will be a lot higher.

Optimize your site for the user and not the engine.  Seach engine
companies' main goal is to guide the user to what the user is looking
for, so if you keep it up and make your site as user-friendly as
possible, then you'll continue to move on up in the rankings as search
engines beeline towards the theoretical perfect search algorithms that
would completely understand what the user wants or needs.

One of the most critical things I've noticed though is that all of the
urls on your site need to be complete and understandable keywords. 
For example, you would use www.icecreamsite.com/flavors/cherry.html
instead of www.icecreamsite.com/index/page.php?contentid=2344_ch (and
you can sort of hack that into working using apache's mod_rewrite, if
you still want everything being driven by scripts).

Also, the other most important thing is having coherant titles on each
page that  include your two or three main keywords and those should be
first - sitename can come after that in the title.  Those exact same
main keywords should appear in the url for your site.  For example,
you'd have the title be "Flavors: Cherry - The Ice Cream Site" and the
url be www.icecreamsite.com/flavors/cherry.html.

Those two points are probably 70-95% of the result you're gonna get. 
The rest is due to things like meta tags and pagerank that definately
help, but not nearly as much.

Most reputable search engines are intended as tools which will enable
people to find the most relevant material. IMHO, the best search
engines are those which place the needs of the user first.

The best way to rise to the top of the listings is to have a
content-rich site. So-called "optimization" gimmicks sometimes work in
the short term, but may backfire and cause your site to be penalized.

Your main question is "If a potential client were to search on 
Altavista  Google Metacrawler  and MSN SEARCH using lawyer     Houston
  tx    real estate"

Sir, This is what I would suggest you to do:
Title: Real Estate Lawyer Houston Texas TX, Real Estate Lawyer
Houston, Texas Real Estate Lawyer
Description: Real Estate Lawyer Houston Texas TX, Real Estate Lawyer
Houston, Texas Real Estate Lawyer, Your very own guide to any Legal
Issues. Lawyer in Houston Tx specializing in Real Estate law.
Keywords: Real Estate Lawyer, Houston Real Estate Lawyer, Texas Real
Estate Lawyer, TX Layer Real Estate, Texas Real Estate Law Firm,
Houston Real Estate Law Firm.

Header 1: Real Estate Lawyer Houston Texas TX
Header 2: Real Estate Lawyer in Houston
Header 3: Real Estate Lawyer Texas TX
Links: do link building with title in the anchor text as "Real Estate
Lawyer Houston Texas TX"
Register in Yahoo Directory with his keyword and look for more free
directories and use the same title everywhere.
Add pages to your site and link all of them with the index page with
anchor text containing "Real Estate Lawyer Houston Texas TX"

All The Best