This is a compilation of many of the things I have found and discovered during my own submission processes, a few hints and helps that I have found along the way. First of all, if you are going to seriously market your site you will want to use site submission engines, but for many of the reasons you wouldn't think of; There are many Site Submission engines that are top in many engines and directories as far as relevance.

When you use their site for submission they send out your link to a whole bunch of search engines but also a bunch of FFA (Free For All) pages. Some of these pages, believe it or not, are at the top of some hot Directory's and simply having your link on their page will allow your site to always be co-ranked as far as relevance. It is a huge help, more than you can know and it will be helpful for exposure. Not to the public per se, at first. But to the engines and crawlers.

Site Submission Tools:

1. If you use them, (Site Submission Tools) make sure you take out a new garbage e-mail address for the return junk mail which will NEVER stop once you do this. Ignore this rule at your own peril. i.e [email protected]
    
2. Never pay for it. There are so many for free and it is the same exact service. It doesn't take terribly long to do but you should set aside at least 1/2 - 1 full day for this alone. But it is helpful. Make sure you spend adequate time on the Foreign search engines in such countries as Brazil, China, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, India, etc..(See others below).
    
3. link:
   Kirupa has 570 URL's that link to it. That's an awful large number for such a short time. Now here's what happens at Yahoo when someone does a search for any of those other URL's; Yahoo, is a directory, NOT a search engine. When one of those other sites that link to Kirupa gets closer to the top as far as relevance and popularity, Kirupa's site too will rise in relevance rating within the Yahoo Directory Structure. Wanna see it yourself, go to Yahoo and punch in, link: (just 5 characters, the word link and a semicolon, cant do it in brackets it turns to a smiley, Maudit!) before the entire web address for any site you wish this information on. It will then show you all the sites that Yahoo has in their directory with links to Kirupa, and other Directories and engines that it searches through it's meta-crawlers as well.
    
4. Reverse Relevance
   But it works in reverse as well. Hence many will see part of the scheme of my site. www.corpust.com Yahoo does the same thing backwards so to speak. Sites with many links that are highest in Yahoo's relevance are treated in the same fashion. Those sites will rise in relevance in the searches and the site will appear more and more, the higher those other links sites are in relevance. i.e. My site will generate a lot of traffic within a short amount of time if for no other reason than my selection of links. They are all top notch links and the most popular sites on the Net. In other words the search engines and crawlers will welcome my site with open arms as I splashed into the net linking to all the favorites, that consequently are high in relevance and searches.
    
5. Key Words
   As pointed out above, they are essential for traffic. Popular key words include Aliens, Roswell, and UFO's. Throw in UFO's Have Dinner With Local Family! and you will indeed find it generates extra traffic to your site. So make sure your key words are extensive and very telling and manipulative. But the size limit to this is 874 characters. Do not go over this magic arbitrary number.
    
6. Key-Words should have corresponding links
   Another search tip is to have key-words & links that are self-linked. In other words, if you have a key word being; flying saucer, there should be a corresponding link on your page, 'flying saucer' or else the crawler will take points away and award you a lower relevance in it's directory when it returns home.
    
7. Meta- Tags
   So make sure your Meta Tags are all filled out and overflowing so to speak. More is more in this case. Meta-Keywords, Meta-Description, and Meta something or another. This is ultra important for a new site. Make sure they also do not exceed these number, character limits. 60 characters for the title. 150 characters for the description, and no more than 874 characters for the keywords. All above are including the spaces and carriage returns and commas.
    
8. Meta Description
   In this case, less is more. Most crawlers will only pick up/upto the first 150 characters. This is the description you might see if you were at Yahoo and did a search. Each site that comes up will show you like 10, 0r 25 or 50 words to describe the site. This description is the Meta Description function in HTML. These descriptions must be supplied to the engines and crawlers via the meta Description. So be very concise and make it very descriptive. Make the description grab out to the searcher and say, click me, click me! Because that is what they are going to see when doing a search and your site comes up.
    
9. To Spam or not to Spam
   Spend time spamming the "less appropriate" boards with your link, it works! And your only helping these poor souls be distracted with something more wholesome, like your website. Doh! I got a lot of visitors, regular visitors to an older site I used to have with these methods. It works! I feel it is also fair since they hog all the bandwidth on the net with their dirty pictures, to cause them a little annoyance. Easy crowd too! Doh! Newsgroups are excellent as far as getting recognition; They too work on the directory method posted above, but they are also catalogued in the search engines and directories, thus it will help your relevance if your website appears in their newsgroups. It's worth the time. And don't spam the newsgroups, just a somber warning. This is one group that will turn and tear you to pieces. Just work it in slowly, following the rules. This works though and is one highly effective long term method of exposure. Once your link finally gets posted somewhere in a newsgroup, in a harmless way, it will act as a linked site, and depending on the relevance it has in the Yahoo or other search directories will reward you handsomely with new visitors and a higher relevance with Yahoo.
    
10. Content:
    Have something that will cast the biggest net for people coming to your site. And make sure there is a big net to keep them their when they finally come. People want their news. They want to search. And they want the governments corruption all in one easy to find place. Hence my site, our site actually, I am just the Webmaster of the Corpus Tyrannicus Research Institute. www.corpust.com I think it will be a draw for people. I am even starting to like my site, and I'm feeling picky. I already have 384 internal links. And like 13,524 external links, if Dreamweaver is telling me the truth, I think it's lying.
     
11. Expired links & Extra money
    Now many of those links are expired or will expire. No problem, once I set up my 404 file page, they will be directed to a 404 site that pays me 4 cents for each and every one of those suckers. I cannot police 18,000 links. And many of them are in archived stories that most will not click on, reference stuff and stuff.
     
12. International Submission
    Spend time in other countries submitting your site. This got me the most traffic. France, Germany, Canada, Britain, Singapore, Russia, China, Taiwan, Australia!!-These are good places and needful if you want international traffic right away (4-6 weeks). Expect it to take about 6 weeks for your website to be thoroughly spidered throughout the web, worldwide after submission unless you come and beg me for little tricks on how to speed this up. Make sure your site is in it's permanent URL as well. Don't be trigger happy with these steps. Each in it's own turn. Do not place your unfinished site in your respective URL till it is finished, This is how many excellent site never make it to any directories. They build them on site and are unaware that the crawlers have already been there 5 times before they finish and have deemed it a 'user' site with the lowest possible relevance. It might indeed be listed somewhere in Yahoo, but it will be somewhere around 105,262 out of 106,000 links found. Not good. Not findable, not searchable. An albatross for all intents and purposes.
     
13. Now that your site is up...
    Make sure the servers know. Go to as many sites as possible FROM your site. This will catalogue YOUR NEW URL into their New URL Directory and each and every 'portalpoint' of the internet that it takes you to get to that page. Example; If I click on, say, 'Moscow Times' my URL might be catalogued by as many as 2-300 servers, each time it goes thru a junction, your URL is catalogued in these new URL directories. This in itself is worthless, except these servers are crawled and allowed to be crawled for this directory by default. Lists of names are then generated, which are found by the search engines en mass. The sooner these engines see your URL all over the net, the better.
     
14. Size; Appearance
    Make sure your page loads quickly, has a pro look, and plenty of material. Now that you have spent all this time to get them to come, what do you have to offer them if they stay?
     
15. Avoid the piss-offs;
    No small hard to read print (a big sin of the flasher community)
    Small, undersized buttons (a growing portion of our population id elderly and need big print and big buttons, and also a sin for flashers) Hard on the eyes color schemes, which we all seem to, by nature pick as a first choice. Doh! Light is usually better than dark, a good tip to follow.
     
16. 404's
    Front page links that don't work. (Don't put em up if they don't work)
    The search engines a meta crawlers will also whack you heavy for this indiscretion.
     
    Then the really obvious stuff like no black background with internet green print. No red print. Color schemes must be superior and pleasing, well pleasing. If they don't like the look they won't return.
     
17. Contact;
    Make it easy to find. And make sure they can contact you. Most of the time it doesn't matter if they don't get a return mail, but if they want to write you and cannot it is a turnoff. Also, unless you want to end up having your email box ruined, find the javascript available as open source and hide your mailto:'s, so they cannot be spidered.
     
18. Popups
    Don't use em. Idiots made those to wreck the internet experience. Don't give in to the idiots. Whoever first thought those up should be shot, along and after the person who invented the hold button on the telly. Or at least sacked.
     
    Frames; Try not to confine people to your site within frames; Not a good idea. This is a major annoyance to people. I also refuse to revisit sites that follow the scheme.
     
19. Navigation
    Back button; I am unforgiving on this issue; With me it is a cardinal sin as many might already know; If I am surfing and go to your site and you make my return path void by blanking the back button or any of those other mindless schemes to imprison me in their site, I will never, EVER. under any circumstance revisit the site. No matter how cool, no matter what. That is unforgivable and selfish, it has ruined so many of my searches I would like to personally strangle the mind numbed jerk who invented it. But I digress.
     
20. Word of Mouth
    And word of mouth which is the number one way, after of course having a site that interests them for more than 5 minutes. You better have something they want or else my take on human nature is they are gone and won't return. Fickle crowd and a big world wide web. Remember that though, they want instant gratification for news, weather, games, whatever. But instant is the codeword. Long load pages are seldom revisited by me.
     
21. Incomplete Pages
    Avoid placing an incomplete page in it's respective URL for more than 1 week. Trust me, this can kill all the visitors perceptions of your site. The search engines and meta crawlers also will rank punish you with poor relevance until they detect through another crawl, a correction. (And remember, there is a 6-8 week time drag for Crawlers, so don't make this error, be ready and waiting for them as honored guests) When I see an under construction sign, I am outta there. Just me, but I think many are the same way. Every site is almost always under construction, so lose the signs. They were cute at first, then irritating as people used these to replace content and good intentions. But the under construction signs are a buzz kill.

These a few tips for now-if you noticed occasional misspelled words or emoticons, you should understand that Kirupa copied my post from the forums and decided to convert my writings into an article.
 
Hope some of them helped...if not, post them on the forums and we'll discuss it!
 
Phil Jayhan