Although only a small ASCII text file, robots.txt enables a significant degree of fine tuning to be applied to your Search Engine optimization program. Used intelligently robots.txt can do a big job, significantly improving your knowledge about, and control of, visiting Search Engine robots. This is particularly case where a web site owner either wishes to deliver specific content optimized for a particular Search Engine, or has paid for an accelerated Search Engine listing service where if would be useful to track activity of robot associated with that specific paid-for service.

Just as Robot Number 5 gathered more and more input and transformed this data into useful information, so web site owners can use data generated by interaction between robots.txt, visiting spiders and their web logs to gain significant competitive advantage.

(12) MSN: MSN draws results from LookSmart.com first, then after that, matches are displayed from (13) AltaVista. Therefore, we submit at www.looksmart.com (a directory) and to AltaVista to be found in MSN.

Additionally there are very popular Search engines to submit to that can be found on many web sites using search box's.

(14) Infoseek/Go Network (15) Lycos (16) Planet Search (17) WebCrawler (18) What-U-Seek (19) WhatsNu (20) Northern Light I hope information given will aid you to get your sites placed in search engines so give some thought to your keywords, check your load times, make sure your site is easy to navigate, and get submitting. To learn more about how Search engines rate sites and other tips I would recommend visiting http://www.searchenginewatch.com

---------------------------------------------- Resubmission's are just as important

----------------------------------------------

After all hard work you've done to submit your site, don't neglect it by hoping you will stay on top - YOU WON'T! You must resubmit your site at a min of every 4 weeks. There are some great programs and sites out there that can submit your site for you so be sure to book mark at least 3 sites if you don't have sumitting software.

I use a calendar here to remind me when I am due to resubmit. But for beginners easiest thing you can do is, submit on 1st of every month. Your site will remain fresh in databases and show it as a current site submission. With information above you are armed now so you know what sites will give you best results.

With out question you NEED to get listed in ODP site - though evaluator may be your competitor and my not register your site in his section, this may not be case with other link categories that follow the same theme. You want to be listed in as MANY categories as you can (what's worst that can happen? They say no?) So submit to each available listing in main category.

---------------------------- Linking to other sites ----------------------------- Who should you try to get to link to you? In simple terms, anyone and everyone. In more practical terms however, it depends on effort and what you have to give up in return. Exchanging a banner ad on your site for a link from a high quality busy site may be extremely valuable for attracting new visitors. The banner may however, redirect your hard sought visitor to banner site and away from yours.

Banners also tend to clutter a web page, increase load time and distract your visitors. You can only put up a limited number and then what do you exchange?

When was last time you cruised a link exchange site looking for somewhere interesting to go? The fact is people look for sites with search engines or by search lists and recommendations at related sites. Link exchanges will produce few if any visitors and if they do they will probably not be prime candidates for your product or service. That is not unless you have a link exchange site yourself.

Not necessarily. There is actually a growing value to having these links to your site. As previously mentioned, many search engines, especially second generation engines, are starting to use site popularity as a way to rank your site. In other words, a site with 100 links to it will rank higher in search results than a site with only 5 or six. It is consequently important to establish links to your site both for traffic they can generate directly and for indirect value of improving your search engine ranking.

Although Link Exchanges may be of value, it is better to put your initial efforts into exchanging links with other related sites. Not only will they generate more visitors, visitors they do generate will be better qualified. What about competitors? Sometimes competitors attract viewers who may not find exactly what they need. If you allow your competition to also have a link what's harm? The idea is to attract viewer. link pages if you have a lot of links and put any Link Exchange banners on your site. Put these at bottom if you do decide to use them all to often these banners will hang while loading and cause page itself to hang - most viewers will not wait long so play it safe, and put it at bottom. This way viewer can still see your site and then banner later.

Joining Web Rings related to your topic if one is available or create one if not is another option available to attract viewers. With E commerce now on rise shoppers want to find best deals by having all related competition in one ring it makes it easy to find what and were best deals are. The key to using rings, is in registration of page - you must use full URL address of page that will host banner for that ring. This is especially important if your site uses frames.