Consider this few tips:
* Internal linking is very important: External links are very important but I have lots of pages that show on the top of the results in Google without having any external links pointing to them and without having any page rank . The other very important tip is to let the internal link's anchor text contain the same keywords your original article has. For example when linking to your article that is called "How to become rich fast" from another page don't give the link the title "making money" or "Getting rich" but instead call it "How to become rich fast."
* Write articles that match popular search keywords: Your article's title , keywords and header tags should match popular search keywords. For example if people always search for the keywords "How to become rich fast" then your article should be optimized for this key phrase. For example your article's title and URL path should not be "how to make money" or "how to earn thousands of dollars" but instead it should be "How to become rich fat". For more information see my articles how to optimize my pages for search engines and Increasing search engine hits.
* Does time really matter? Older pages are more respected by search engines but I usually see my new websites showing up in the top results in Google three weeks after the creation date. In short, time doesn't matter, if anyone told you anything other than this know that he doesn't have enough experience.
* Your main page should be stuffed with keywords that are related to your articles: Pretty self explanatory, taking the last example into consideration the main page should contain the keywords "Become rich" and "Fast". Of course its much better to have the whole key phrase in the main page if possible.
* Does frequent updates really matter?: yes, updating your website daily is a must. Google gives higher importance to websites that are updated daily. You can take one or two days off but try to update your website during the rest of the days.