Instead, submit your site to major search engines and directories, monitor results, and resubmit only if your site isn't listed yet. (You have worked hard on page content, page title and keyword and description meta tags, haven't you?) Repeat this process for any new content you create.

You can use an automatic tool, or you can hand-submit to each site. The latter approach takes more time, but at least you can be sure your site *has* been submitted!

Either way, site-submission process doesn't take long, but it may well take a few months before your efforts are rewarded by search engine traffic. But rewarded you will be - search engines are still best way of getting site traffic, for least cost!

=> USE THIS SITE SUBMISSION RESOURCE

Use Jim Tools site submission tool. This fantastic tool allows you to submit your site to all major search engines and directories (excluding human-edited directories like Yahoo!, Looksmart, and DMOZ - you have to visit these sites directly. You must now also visit Alta Vista directly, too.)

Jim Tools is a highly popular destination with webmasters and site promoters world over; so you can be sure that submission tool is kept up to date. (Hence it is best to visit at a less popular surfing time of day!)

http://jimtools.com/submit.html

=> OR VISIT THESE LINKS

AltaVista http://add-url.altavista.com/cgi-bin/newurl?

AOL Search http://search.aol.com/add.adp

DirectHit http://www.directhit.com/util/addurl.html

Excite http://www.excite.com/info/add_url/

FAST Search http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php3

Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html

HotBot http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp

Lycos http://www.lycosuk.co.uk/service/addasite.html

Looksmart/MSN http://search.msn.com/addurl.asp

Like it or not, keywords and phrases you select to describe your site within your META tags and body text can make or break your listings in search engines. It’s a sad fact that most companies are targeting wrong keywords and losing traffic as a result.

Even sites that have excellent rankings will not benefit if those rankings are for unsuitable keywords. Let me give you an example:

A few months ago, we had an Australian client who wanted us to implement an optimization campaign to improve their search engine rankings, but without jeopardising existing rankings they had achieved for two particular search phrases: "Internet solutions Australia" and "online banking solutions".

Can you guess what products and services this company sells? The search phrases don’t really give much away do they? In fact, this company is a distributor of web site design software that is specifically tailored for banks. Now ask yourself this: if you were a bank looking for this company’s products, would you have typed in either of phrases above to find their site? I doubt it. You would type in something more logical like "web site design software" or "web sites for banks" right?