1. Stick to big names: The two largest directories: Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com) and Open Project Directory (http://www.dmoz.org), and two largest search engines: Google (http://www.google.com ) and Inktomi (used by MSN search (http://www.msn.com) and AOL (http://www.aol.com)) are likely to deliver 80% of your traffic, so concentrate on those and don't spend too much time on anybody else.

2. Yahoo and Open Project Directory are administered by humans, so an editor will inspect your site before it's added. They receive so many submissions that it can literally take months before your site is reviewed, and nothing (not even paid subscriptions) guarantees that it will be listed. It's worth to keep trying, though, so check back every month or so and, if your site isn't listed, submit it again.

3. Google and Inktomi are robots (software programs) that "crawl" (find and read) millions of sites on web, and add them to their index. That's why it is not absolutely necessary to manually submit your site to a search engine, since they may find your site and add it automatically when they find a link to your site on another page.

4. You don't need to submit all pages on your site. Once search engine finds your main page (homepage), it will find other ones by following links. To improve chances of your secondary pages being found, create a link called ‘site map' in your homepage, and have it point to a page that is nothing but a collection of links to all pages on your site. This way, search engine will follow link and "suck in" all your pages. Try putting this link as close to top of your homepage as possible, since it will have a better chance of being picked up by search engine.

Google PageRank First and foremost, PageRank is part of algorithm of Google's ranking in search engine results. Other search engines use link popularity in their algorithm to evaluate your website as well. But PageRank is only one of 100 plus criteria Google uses to evaluate your web pages. Use idea of PageRank as a "tool" to help make decisions, there's no need to live and die by results. Link popularity itself is merely one way to improve your ranking.

Should You Link To Them? Think about it. You see a quality website, you see good content. The site is a "Mom and Pop" website with little ranking. So what if Google Toolbar says PageRank 2/10? That 2/10 may one day be 8/10. More importantly, you are linking to it because it is good to link to for your visitors - end of story.

Reciprocal Linking Fears There is a general fear of reciprocal linking to websites who inadvertently link to a "bad neighborhood" with penalties or PageRank zero, passing on problems to you. Use your common sense. Is this a website you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit? If answer is no or you can't tell what subject of site is, make a note of it and keep looking. A website full of links with little content doesn't "make sense" because what benefit is it to you or your visitors? Of course you are going to link to your partners in business or maybe small website that is doing a bang up job of selling widgets and providing widget information.

Linking Just To Link If you are going to link, what purpose does it serve? The idea of acquiring link popularity by linking back and forth to other sites to boost your popularity artificially is a popular method. But is it of value to your website? Ask yourself: