Search engines are not mystical beings that are moved by the correct sequence of cerimonial rituals. Search engines are simply trying to bring the best results to their users for their searches. If you just use some basic logic as to how a search engine might determine the best results you can rule out a lot of common myths that people claim help you rank higher, here are a few that I've been seeing lately:
Resubmitting your web site to the search engines regularly. This helps nothing, search engines are smart enough to know how often you update your web site, resubmitting doesn't make them check more often. Resubmitting is a waste of time, submit your site once, and don't worry about it after that.
Making your web site XHTML compliant. (sorry if this one is over most people's heads, but at least you'll know about it if someone tries to sell it to you) Seeing that 99% of the internet is not XHTML compliant, search engines would have a real problem if they decided these web sites were somehow not important. Search engines are trying to get you the best information for your searches, how cleanly your code is written is not a factor.
Trading links with other people. This is probably one of the most widely practiced method of search engine optimization that doesn't help you at all. Search engines are smart enough to know that your are trading links, and they know why you are doing it. It's ok to swap links for the traffic it might bring to your site, but it's not going to help you rank higher in search engines.
Just think about it logically. If you were a search engine, and you wanted to give people the best results for their searches, what would you look at to generate your results? I bet you wouldn't care how many times they resubmitted their site that week. :)
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