Ann Smarty has written a post at Search Engine Journal about how the mindset of webmasters who launch sites with and without SEO in mind. If SEO is a priority, choose a relevant domain name and think over website structure. Of course, that's how you'd approach it if search engines were important.
But what if they weren't?
If search engines didn't exist (or rather, you'd like the search engines to find you instead), you wouldn't care about indexing the site immediately and you certainly wouldn't submit your site to search engines. You wouldn't update your content that quickly. Instead, you'd search for alternative traffic sources, like blog comments.
She has a good point. As Barry Welford says, "Simply put it’s getting the fundamentals right then watching it grow." Eventually, it will, but technicalities may not have to be at the forefront of your thought process.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.