Google

Links to your website count as votes to your site and the more votes (links) it has, the better the site must be. According to some authors, links are only relevant after these factors are taken into account:

Finds all pages matching the keywords of the search
Rank accordingly using "on the page" factors (proximity between words, frequency, repetition etc)
Calculate the relevancy of inbound anchor text

http://www.ssw.com.au/SSW/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterGoogleRankings.aspx#HowGoogleRanksPages

To check Page Rank, download the Google Toolbar.

"Google Dance" is when Google is busy reindexing your website and the Page Rank of your site suddenly changes. Your Page Rank will normally stabilise after Google has finished indexing your web pages.

Submit your site map first, because this gives Google a direct link to every relevant page within your website.

See who's linking to your site - type "site:www.website.com" into Google. However, this only lists incoming links from pages with a minimum Page Rank

Page Rank distribution: http://www.ssw.com.au/SSW/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterGoogleRankings.aspx#PageRankFlow

Google is Case Sensitive when it comes to links, so always use the same case when linking between pages in your site.
http://www.ssw.com.au/SSW/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterGoogleRankings.aspx#URLCaseSensitive

Also, if your website is available without the "www." part, ensure visitors get redirected to the "www." site as a 301 (permanently moved) otherwise Google may think you're spamming the search engines with multiple copies of the same content.