What You Should Be Focusing On...

Unique, quality content rules. Don't get stressed out about your meta tags, link lists, exchanges etc.

If you want the search engines to love you, build a website with lots of useful themed content. Promote your website in relevant places (social networking sites, forum signatures, blog commenting, etc.)

Once people begin discovering your site, many will link to you voluntarily (assuming they find it valuable) and THAT's how you get the search engines to respect you. It takes time, but it's definitely worth the wait.

Write for humans, not the search engine spiders. Forget about keyword density (the ratio of a keyword phrase to total body content), just write for real people.

Bottom line: Don't take shortcuts. Be ethical and work hard to build the best site you can. You'll be rewarded in the end.