Links, the web is full of them

Be honest. You expected to find a list of interesting links when you navigated to this page.
Links. That's where search engines look at when examining the importance of a website. The more links to your website it finds, the more important your website apparently is. So, placing links on your site is less important then making sure that others point their links to you...
Most of the advertised tricks and hints in this area have a limited value. In due time, search engines became smarter and smarter. All your efforts on becoming a number one site can easily be in vain, because search engine developers usually are one step ahead of you.
Becoming an easily found website is hard labour. And it should be done by hand. Contacting webmasters of interesting pages with links for example. Sending your URL to lots of search engines is not the only way to go anymore.