Things have changed. Today, with billions of pages, and many of once free search engines going to fee models, your chances of being found in search engines is pretty slim unless you can devote yourself full-time to search engine submission.

Factor into this fact that search engines won't accept affiliate pages, and your chances of being found are non-existent.

If being a search engine guru just doesn't appeal to you, then pay-per-click search engines may be just thing.

To get started with pay-per-click search engines requires some preparation. Once you get everything set up though, this is a very easy promotion method for you to maintain.

You will need to create a text document or spreadsheet of your information so that when you are ready to begin your submissions, you can cut and paste your entries, saving you time.

The first thing that you want to do before you sign up with any of pay-per-clicks is to create a good description and list of key words you want to purchase.

It is very important that you select right key words or you are wasting your time.

There are, however, some very good tools that you can use to help you select your key words. Here are an excellent site for helping you select your key words: Overture Search Engine Suggestion Tool - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

Once you have selected your key words, write your description of your product or service. I would recommend that you go to one of pay-per-clicks, or several, and use some of key words you have selected to help you find sites you will be competing against.

Put everything you have into to it. What are you interested in? Focus on your strengths and interests. Write something useful. Write something new. Make some lists (ie. top 10 ways to ....). Ensure all titles, links, meta tags are properly coded.

2) Develop your target audience.

Who are you marketing your site to? Although some sites may appear to be general interest - i.e yahoo. You want to focus on users who will bring most value to you. Find underlying purpose of your site, most of time, it is to get information out to a specific group of people, and increasingly more popular now to have e-commerce sites. But again, you are offering information on a product or service or multiple products and services, and then providing online sale. Depending on underlying purpose of your site, you will be able to quickly identify value target audience.

3) Build community

Now comes fun part. You have to build a community of website frequenters. Not visitors, visitors are guest, people who stroll in and stroll out. In order to build a community, you have to keep your site fresh with new content that will keep users coming back. The internet term is sticky content. Now I am not just talking about getting those free syndicated content news article links from moreover.com, or other companies. I am talking about writing your own content. Or getting other peoples work (you have to have their permission of course). Many writers would love to have their work posted on many websites around world, developing and growing their exposure. They will likely ask for a text-ad with their name, company, and link back to their website.

Another area, which you should use to keep your site up to date is to, build a library of relevant links. Use target attribute in anchor tag so link opens in a new browser window. An important part of this step is ensuring that you have submitted your site to all of major search engines. Don't bother with those paid submission schemes. They often are more hype than what they claim to do. One of most important things to consider when submitting to search engines is coding of each page, unique titles on each page, then have corresponding text in main body. Also make use of ALT="" attribute, especially if your site has a lot of images.

Ensure that you take a look at specialty search engines for your industry / value target. / geography. IF you are a Canadian site, you would want your site listed in all of major Canadian search engines (Sympatico and so on). If your site deals with automotive products, you would want to be listed on various automotive specific directories. One site, searchenglinewatch.com, provides a list of search engines in various categories. IN addition, a simple search for "Automotive Search Engines" on goggle would yield you something.

4) Get WORD OUT.