Websites and search engines

[daz]

A mate has setup a website and would like to get it known on search engines. Anyone know the best way to do this?

Daz

[MartinS]

Finally, something I know a little about!

First thing to do is get yourself a method of registering the site with the major search engines - most have a link which can be followed to register for addition, and some hosting packages have the option in the control panel to do this for you (mine do). Now it can take some time for the site to be registered, and can take months to start showing up in the listings, but there are things you must make sure he does:
If he has a links page, get anyone he's linking to to do a reciprocal link - it's not about keywords anymore, it's all about finding you from other sites. As an example, my dad's site has no links to it (as yet), but several links from it and it's taken a year to get included on google.
If he uses keywords (recommended max is 30) in his HTML, then he must use the same words in various places on one or more pages.
As I said, try and get as many links as possible to the site - it will help more than anything else.
There's a start - if he needs anymore advice, feel free to get in touch.
Regards
Martin