For those of you new to the world of search engine optimization it's basically making changes to your website (often behind the scenes in the code) to make it as easy as possible for search engines to peruse your site (using "Spiders" to "crawl" it) so they can evaluate your importance and rank you accordingly in the search results when someone looks for your kind of site.

If you are going to seek search engine help from a company, start with a recognizable name like Microsoft's Submit It program. It's fairly self-serve but easy to understand and great for beginning your search engine submission process and at $49 a year for the basic package, it doesn't bust your budget. For you Do-It-Yourselfers, here are some basic search engine optimization tips.

Keywords
Keywords are the actual words and phrases people will use to search for a site like yours. You will need to select a series of keywords or keyword phrases. One way to find out what keywords will work best for you is to find your top competitors online and find out what keywords they are using; while on your competitors main page, click on "View" and then "Source" from your internet browser. Keep in mind that you will also need to:

Title & Description Tags
Title tags and Description tags are also placed within the code of your web pages and when someone does a search these titles and descriptions show up in the search results. You want to use this opportunity to promote your business and entice someone to click through to your site in the search results. A good way to do your title tag: list the ONE MAIN keyword followed by a dash then a "call to action" i.e. "Virus protection - Protect your hard drive from malicious computer viruses." The average search engine only shows 60 - 80 characters of your Title tag so don't make it too long. Keep your Description tag to 150 - 200 characters.

Website Content
Sites with too few pages or that don't appear to have any content (links only) may be refused by the search engines. So make sure you have lots of original content even if it's not originally yours. There are many sites that will let you reproduce their articles or other content to use on your site. It is important to have a Site Map (a page listing all your other linked pages) linked to your main page; it gives spiders a precise map to easily and quickly categorize your site. In terms of additional content you may want to add a Resources section to your site as part of a Reciprocal Link Program where you offer to link to someone's site in exchange for them linking to yours. Site popularity is a major factor in determining your search engine ranking. You need a minimum of 100 links coming in to your site (links going out are not so important).

Submitting Your Website
After optimizing your website (cleaning it up to make it search-engine friendly) the next step is to submit your site. Many companies offering this service say they will submit your site to hundreds of search engines but there are only 10-20 main ones that are important - for a current list check out: http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156221 . Some companies will submit your website to hundreds of small unknown directories that will list your site in exchange for permission to use your email address; then you will suddenly be inundated with the largest amount of junk email you've ever seen. Also be on the lookout for companies that charge you more depending on how many pages of your website you want submitted; most search engines prefer that you just submit the main page. Open Directory Project is important directory to submit your website to because more than 90 search engines use data from it - http://dmoz.org/.