With all of the changes to the search engines these days, you can drive yourself crazy trying to get your site submitted. Unless you are willing to commit yourself to doing it full time, or you are a search engine expert, you won't rank at the top of the engines. However, this doesn't mean that you should neglect this important means of getting traffic to your site.

Unlike most of the methods for promoting your business, which came from the offline world, this method is different. It's unique, and it is changing and growing at a rapid pace. By at least informing yourself of the basics, you can make this a more effective method for driving traffic to your site.

Below are seven tips you can implement to get started:

1. Understand the Relationships of the Various Search Engines. Before you can know where to submit, you need to understand how all of the various search engines are related so that you don't duplicate your work, or worse, get banned from submission.

Now, mind you, I am no search engine expert. However, I have been watching closely what is happening, and here is what I have seen so far:

Recently, Yahoo, a directory, acquired All the Web, Altavista, Inktomi and Overture. Yahoo is no longer going to be using search results from Google as its backend.

Although it remains to be seen what role All The Web and Altavista will play, Inktomi will only provide limited offerings in Yahoo because Yahoo announced that Inktomi's paid inclusions would not be included in its results.

Overture, the number one pay per click search engine, provides paid results to 80 per cent of the major search engines and will continue to do so. It will also be providing backend results to Yahoo. Overture provides results to major sites like HotBot and MSN.

Yahoo is adding its own search engine and will continue to offer its paid directory at $299 a year.

Currently, MSN and Yahoo, the number two and number one sites respectively on Alexa, are battling for supremacy. Bill Gates is also working on a new model for his search engine, but it remains to be seen what that will be.

Eventhough Google will no longer be providing backend results to Yahoo, Google is still a major player. It is also the number one search engine in the world. Google gets some of its results from the Open Directory Project, a volunteer effort to create a directory of the best sites on the Internet.

Looksmart is still out there, but it appears to have changed its model to a pay per click. You can get started for free, but you'll have to pay for each click. (NOTE: I found this site hard to navigate to answer the most simple questions. Maybe that's why it's the least relevant of the options available.)

Finally, you have Alexa, which is in a class all its own. You definitely want to get your site submitted here because it's a great way to find out who is linking to you, where you rank, and other statistics about your site. Back end results for Alexa are provided by Google.

The easiest way to track your site using Alexa, is to download a copy of the toolbar. You can get it here: jingerjarrett@smallbusinesshowto.com