Ok, here goes. The following is something I wrote for someone else a while ago:
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The first and most important thing in getting into search engines is having a decent TITLE meta tag. Meta tags provide identification of your website. The title tag is that which appears in the top left corner of your browser, and that which appears as the title of search engine results.
Get as many keywords as you can into your title tag as most search engines these days use this is the primary identifier for the site - providing that the content does match the title.
You could also try googleads but if your not selling anything it may not be worth it.
Posting it on the forums is a good idea to because it provides a link TO your site and will improve its overall position. (hint) The more people that link TO your site, the better it's rankings.
I have had endless battles with search engines and you may notice that you can go up and down all the time.
DMOZ is a great idea as suggested but do STAY AWAY from those companies who promise inclusion to hundreds of search engines - they dont work and they will make your site go down in rankings, perhaps not even appear at all. Just submit them to the big guns individually. IMHO it takes about a year before you have a good foundation with the search engines - this is a game of patience.
Do follow web building guidelines especially where design, layout and META tags are concerened.
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You might want to check out the following:
How to use Meta tags
I was just about to offer to re-write your index page with all the tags you need when I found
this which is a META tag builder - give it a whirl and see what comes up. Make sure the words you use reflect the actual content of the site - for example, a site may be advertising something, say DVD's, yet the author could use obscene meta tags to get visitors if you know what I mean? Well, this doesnt happen anymore, cos the search engines actually crawl through your page and physically look at whats on it - so get all your important words (words people may type in to find your site) and get them on the front page!
Other than that, get back to me if you need any more help
