Free Non-commercial sites can be submitted at no charge through Zeal.com. Sites listed in Zeal will be distributed across LookSmart Network.

8. Lycos. http://home.lycos.com/addasite.html

Free submission of one page of your site. Takes 4-6 weeks and is not guaranteed. You need to fill out a form to sign up.

Paid - guaranteed submission within 48 hours Price - $18.00/year Cost per URL - $12.00

9. Netscape. http://digitalwork.netscape.com/onlinead/registersite

Your site will be submitted each month to major search engines such as Google (used by Yahoo), AOL, Excite, MSN and Hotbot.

Price - $99.99/year

10. Northern Light. http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html

Free. This one only has free submissions. Only submit one page from your web site. Their spider will crawl through rest of pages.

11. The Open Directory Project http://dmoz.org/add.html

A directory is different to a search engine, because submissions are reviewed by real people, not machines. When submitting, search for appropriate category for your web site, then go to top of page where it says, “add URL”.

Free This is great directory to get listed in because you will also be listed with its partners which include: AOL Search, DirectHit, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Netscape Search and others.

It takes 2 weeks to several months to get listed.

12. Yahoo. http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest

Yahoo is most popular search engine service. It also uses actual people to compile its listings. It partners with Google when search results fail to find a match within Yahoo.

This directory has only fee-based inclusions for business sites, called Yahoo Express. Your site will be reviewed within 7 business days. Keep in mind that payment DOES NOT automatically guarantee inclusion in directory.

Price - $299.00 non-refundable, recurring annual fee per submission, for initial consideration in Directory.

Tips 1. If you want to get traffic to your site, make sure you get listed in all or at least a few of these major players. Make sure your web site is optimized before you do your submissions (read “How to Use Keywords to Optimize Your Site for Search Engines - http://www.isitebuild.com/keywords.htm). This will vastly increase your chances of getting listed.

2. Getting massive amounts of traffic doesn’t guarantee sales. Your web site copy must pull your visitors through page for them to take action. Get others to read your copy and ask for their opinions. (read “How to Avoid Sloppy Web Site Copy” - http://www.isitebuild.com/copy).

3. To achieve higher rankings (and therefore more traffic) in search engines, you need to continually refine your web site. Monitor your site rankings by adjusting keywords used in your meta tags and web site copy, then submit again.

4. Search engines should be only one of your marketing strategies. One week you could be at top of a search engine, next week your site may disappear. Use other methods to drive traffic to your site, so you don’t just rely on search engines.

Now go and submit your site to these major search engines. When you succeed in getting a top listing, as a result of taking action on this article, drop me a thank you note – I’ll be cheering for you!

Herman Drost is a Certified Web Site Designer, owner and author of iSiteBuild.com Affordable Site Design, Hosting and Promotion Packages http://www.isitebuild.com

"This flash movie was made transparent so you may see effects of putting text behind flash. Using Dynamic HTML, you can absolutely position a flash object right over top of your existing html code. Search engines see copy and text while visitors see your dynamic flash movie."

To see Dave's example, visit complete article found at below URL, and look for "Flash Sample." Once there, click anywhere in browser window, hold down CTRL and hit "A" on your keyboard (Ctrl+A = highlight all) to see how this sample FLASH movie would otherwise "hide" text were FLASH not transparent.

(To view Flash Sample, visit this article online at http://www.academywebspecialists.com/newsletters/0702.html)

Dave was kind enough to share with us source code he used to create effect, which can also be found above URL.

It should be noted this effect works only in browsers that support HTML version 4.0 or greater. This is only a minor concern, however, as vast majority of browsers that are being used today are compatible.

Yes, but will Search Engines tolerate "trick"?

Obviously most pressing question is whether or not search engines will accept, or reject, pages that make use of this strategy. After all, possibility of layering irrelevant content under, or even entirely off page (by assigning minus positioning coordinates) is a distinct possibility.

To anticipate how search engines might view this strategy, once again, we consider issues of "intention" and "relevancy."

Perhaps Stephen Baker, Director of Business Development and Marketing at FAST, said it best when he remarked, "Our position is pretty straight forward...it's not technique that we are concerned about, it's intention. If we index text in Z- Order and CSS and it's relevant to content, then we're all happy. But, as you know, we do have internal systems that trip wires all of time. If a particular technique becomes heavily abused over time, we'll definitely stop indexing information through said technique."

As we've said countless times before, certain legitimate Web site enhancements, like FLASH, frames, dynamic content, etc., are a nightmare for engines to index. They simply have never done a very good job on complicated HTML page, and FLASH poses, perhaps, greatest indexing challenge of them all.

Regardless, sites that use these upscale tools have as much right to be found as any others within their selected keyword categories. Projecting a professional image to your potential customers is important, and using Z Order within your CSS gives enables you to obtain that professional image without sacrificing search engine findability.