This video, from one of the most respected guys at Google, is now 2 years old, but these principles still apply today.
PS – for NEW site owners: when he says: “Google usually finds your site in 3 days…” – keep in mind that this means if you type the name of website into Google, you’ll probably get found within this period – this DOESN’T mean you’ll get found for your main keywords in this time. Depending on how competitive your key-phrase is (i.e. at the time of writing, “house painters sydney” returned no less that 77,500 results! Obviously to get your site placing in the top 20 [first 2 pages], is going to take TIME AND WORK. Perhaps many months depending on how busy you are adding content and trying to get links to your site.
