9. Search Engines
There are two main types of search engines: crawlers and directories. Crawler engines (eg Google, Altavista) automatically spider/search through the web from link to link, using algorithms to evaluate sites and their rankings. Directory engines (eg Yahoo) are evaluated individually by human editors and manually compiled. The absolute best referrence for search engines is:
SearchEngineWatch Yahoo is the most well-known directory search engine. Yahoo organises sites by category. To get into the main Yahoo search listings, first study the categories to determine where your site will fit best. To add your site, select Suggest A Site. Standard submission is free, but it may take several weeks to get your site reviewed and added. You can pay extra to get your site reviewed quickly. Then carefully add your site description, title and keywords. Getting your site onto Yahoo will help you to be found in Google as well. You can also advertise in the Yahoo classified section for free, although the volume of sites submitted means your site won't be on top for very long. LookSmart is an important directory because it provides input to other engines. To get added for free, you need to go through Zeal to be assessed. You can also pay. Mind you, Zeal don't like overtly commercial sites with obvious affinity programs. They rejected my site. Also try to get added to DMOZ , the Open Directory, again being assessed by real live volunteer people. DMOZ also contributes to other engines. Don't miss this one. Google is probably the most important crawler engine of all. The best way to get onto Google, is by having lots of links to your site. And by being added to the smaller engines. You can also select Add URL from the Google page. Read up more on this at searchenginewatch.com. These sites have tools to submit to heaps of search engines FREE!
JimTools
AddMe
WorldwidePromoter
This site has enough free information for you to select your keywords, optimise your code, and submit to the MAJOR engines individually for free. They also sell their services.
1stSearchRanking - an excellent resource