Gimme  gimme  gimme! 

Lets start with the good ol' search engine. Even though you probably wont get the bulk of your hits from search engines, they do send you a steady stream of new visitors. Remember, every little bit counts. Let me break it down into 3 steps.

Step 1.)
Meta tagging is the most important step. You should start by writing down a list of key words related to your site... So pull out a pencil and paper, I'll wait. Come up with a list with as many key words as you can (30 or 40 will be plenty.) Now organize them from the words that best fit your site, to the least.

Take the top 3 to 5 key words and put them in your title to make a short descriptive sentence about your site. Example... Your site is about fishing, and you choose Fishing, Bass, Lake as your keywords. Organize it like this

Try to keep you title around 15 words. Adding in your URL will help get repeat visitors that may not remember your exact URL.

Now take the top 15-20 key words (including the ones you used in your title) and put them in your meta-keywords tag.

And now you make a short description of your site using some of the top keywords that fit. Put them into your meta-description tag.

Your description should ideally be around 45 words, without going over 200.

A few tips for meta tagging: Don't repeat key words in your title or your meta-keywords tag, this will lower your sites rating on some search engines. Keeps your keywords true to your site. Limit how many key words you use... You will get a higher rating for that word or phrase in the search engines, and will appear higher in the list.

You might want to have different arrangements of titles and meta tags for different pages.

Step 2.)
Submitting is the easiest step. Go to JimTools.com. Click the Submit button from the menu and it will bring up a list of tools. I suggest using the SearchEngineSubmitter and the FFA Submitters. Fill out the forms, click submit, and wait until it's finished. You will see some search engines that wont work. You can go to their sites and submit manually, or not worry about them. You also want to submit to Dmoz.org this is a very important step that most people overlook. Dmoz is used by all the top search engine including AOL, Yahoo!, and Google.

Be careful...
Some search engines delete your submission if you submit a second time. So write down the ones you are in so it doesn't happen to you.

Step 3.)
Maintaining your site will keep your site in good standings. Top search engines generally reindex sites every 2 weeks. If you have a good amount of related content, your sites rank will raise. Myth: Putting keywords on my site and making them the same color as the background, or making the font size 1 will get me tonz of hits! WRONG! Search engines are getting smarter. They give you lower ratings if you use small fonts, and try and hide keywords. In other words, don't try it.