I try to take Google's advice to focus on users instead of search engines, but without traffic, there are no users. Given that Google can generate a lot of traffic for a new website, its important to know how sites are added to the Google index and what can affect where it appears in the search results for a user inquiry.
The problem is that not everyone wants to take the time (myself included) to learn how best to present a website to Google and other search engines so that its content and quality is accurately reflected.
During my experience as a web master, I've learned to do the following things when published websites to ensure that they are included in search engines: