The interesting thing is that while there have been all sorts of mechanisms to get you to the top of search engines the search engines themselves have seen this and are constantly moving to make sure that relevant & popular sites get listed first.

What does this mean - well does your site really talk about and reflect the things you are good at ? The more focussed your site is on the things you do the better your chances are of getting up the ladder

Are search engine techniques worth it ?

Well who are your customers ? Are there millions out there waiting for you or is that more of a wish, can you service them if you get them ?

Back track to what search engines do - they search the web and analyse all the text they find - not the pictures (yet), and build gigantic indices of everything they have seen. They will generally find you and look at all the key words i.e. ignore this, the, and, etc and look for things like tree cutter, hair wash etc which are less common and more useful. They wil find the most common complex words on your site and figure thats what you are about, then they will check other sites that link to you and if they seem similar then they give you a tick. They will also look at who you link to to see if you are staying in your field - the more ticks the higher up the ladder you go. If you are in New Zealand and you like New Zealand customers then mentioning city and country will help keep them focussed

Are rankings in Google all you need? - well today thats a great start - there are other search engines and Microsoft has said it will push to be number 1, so this is bound to change, but for now getting Google working would be just great.

Some good references : http://www.highrankings.com/