Re: Search Engine Submission
If you want your site to be seen it takes a hell of a lot of work. Building the website is the easy and fun bit. Getting it seen can be a 24 hour a day 365 days a year task!! I have over 10 websites to look after and optimize and I don't even get time to scratch my head!
Don't worry about these offers of "search engine submissions" and be careful of some of them on the internet as most of them are a trap to get your email on the "suckers list"
Go to Google and somewhere in the business section is a section where you can submit your own website url. Once they have this the others will follow. You will be surprised how many S.Engines and directories and other weird and wonderful websites you will start to appear on that you have never ever heard of or submitted to.
Just make sure your website is optimized well. I.E. Page titles, keywords, layout, content etc etc
People often make the mistake of making their page titles "Home Page" or "About Us" or they title them "Jane's shop". Now search engines pick up on the title as one of the first things when they spider sites. To them "Jane's shop" means nothing. But if Jane had titled her pages "Leather gloves and accessories" because that's what Jane sells this is more likely to be picked up when someone types into Google "Leather gloves" than it is staying "Jane's shop"
No one knows poor Jane so no one will search for "Jane's shop".
One of my websites sells cheap wedding dresses so my page title is "cheap wedding dresses". On Google I am on page 1. On MSN 4 out of the websites that are on page one are my websites under this search term.
With these link exchanges, stay away from recipricol linking. Google have swayed away from them now. Now they rate sites depending on how many sites link to them that are NOT linked back.
To overcome this you need to start a triangular link system. I have done this by using two of my websites to receive links back. Let me try to explain.
I ask a webmaster to link to my website (A). In return I link back to him from my website (B) which is on a similar theme. Therefore I am linking to him from one site but he is not linking back. He then links to my other website and I don't link back to him from that one. Thus giving us both a one way link. It's hard work persuading people out there to go this way but most realise the potential.
I am tired now from all this typing!
Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.