You can't really keep cycle counts low without simply using your phone less. This is because of how they "accumulate" for every 100% the battery is charged I believe. So going down to 50%, then up to 100%, back down to 50% and back up to 100% is considered one cycle.
Just use your phone and try to avoid extreme heat or cold, moisture, and dying completely and going into deep discharge (being dead for a very long time so the plug-in icon doesn't even show anymore). Doesn't matter how often you charge it or how much or how long it is plugged in really.
That is correct. The easiest way to think about this is that simply using your phone while unplugged wears out the battery. Here are a few tips for improved battery health:
Avoid discharging your battery altogether...
If you really wish to extend your battery life, all you can do is avoid running your phone on battery power as much as possible, and/or use it while plugged whenever you can.
Obviously this is not a very practical strategy and so I wouldn't go to extreme lengths to try and follow it, but if it's easy to do so (for example, if you're sitting at a desk with a charger right in front of you), then that's an easy way to improve battery health.
Avoid deep discharges
A more practical recommendation is to avoid deep discharges as much as possible (where the battery is discharged below 30-40 percent or so). This won't affect the cycle counter, but it
will extend the life of the battery.
Do a deep-discharge about once a month to calibrate the battery
Finally, it's important to do a single deep discharge about once a month. This is NOT for the battery itself, but rather to calibrate the gas gauge chip so it knows how much power is actually stored in the battery.
I've seen users of my app with a 3-4 month old phone that haven't ever completed a single deep discharge, and their battery health was estimated at 40%!! Of course that wasn't an accurate reading, it was just the gas gauge having no idea how much power is actually stored in the battery.
This is a common case where the battery indicator starts dropping very rapidly and users complain of "poor battery life". The actual battery life is not necessarily poor, it's just that the device is showing the battery draining very rapidly. If you let it drain all the way you might find that there is more juice left in those bottom 30% than you thought!