There are some basic parameters that I recommend you focus on regardless of the type of search engine you are submitting to or the keyword phrase you are targeting.  By beginning with these you will have the framework from which to start your submission process with the greatest likelihood of success.   These two basic premises are: 

1. The search engines are looking for current, relevant, unique content.  Each of these factors paint the entire picture of your site.  Here is how:

   Current – The Internet is not a static medium but one of dynamic, interactive content.  Your site content should change frequently.  The search engines want the newest content available and will therefore give preferential placement to newer content when are else is equal.  This will not only help your search engine rankings but your user experience as well. 

   Relevant – Sites that use a keyword phrase often are obviously going to rank better then the ones that use it only once or twice.  If you are selling jewelry on your site then it stands to reason that you would frequently use the words jewelry, diamonds, rings, engagement and other terms that people would search for these products with.  Your site would therefore be relevant to that search.  Where most web sites fail is that they customize their keywords for search terms that they then fail to use consistently in the text of their site.  Don’t bother putting terms in your ‘meta keywords’ or other prime areas of your site that you do not address further with the content of your site.  Not only will you fail to rank well for those pages but you will not convert people who find you with those terms since your site probably has little content relevant to them.

   Unique – The search engines, and especially the directories like Yahoo, don’t want 50 carbon copy sites on the same topic.  If your site doesn’t offer anything new to their database or directory then it has little value to them.  This doesn’t mean that they don’t have multiple sites on the same topic, they obviously do, but that when you want to rank well you need to do so with your own style and content, not an imitation of the number 1 ranking site.

   Content – It cannot be stressed enough that the search engine spiders (the automated process used by the search engines’ databases to crawl your site for the purpose of indexing) are looking for text.  They cannot read graphics.  If you want to rank well for a keyword phrase you need to utilize those keywords in the following areas: title tags, meta tags, meta description and body text of your Home Page.  If you are not going to use a keyword phrase in all of these areas then do not dilute the value of your other keywords by placing it in these areas (with the obvious exception of the body text).
    
2. The search engines are looking to provide the best results for their users and will provide a limited amount of space for each topic.  The search engines are in fact businesses.  The only way they make money (when they do make a profit) is when the can create traffic for the searches.  This means they obviously want to provide useful results.  I do not recommend that you ever create pages specifically to fool the search engines into giving your pages high rankings.  The search engines have some of the brightest mathematicians in the world working for them.  You are not going to outsmart them.  Therefore, your goal should be to customize content that meets the above criteria in 1) to rank well for the terms you select.  Remember that only 25 web sites can be in the top 25.  Your site needs to equal or beat these sites in one or more of the search engines ranking criteria in order to place ahead of them.  One of the criteria that continues to increase in importance is ‘link popularity’.  This is a rating of the number and quality of links coming into and going out of your site.  I compare each incoming link as a reference.  The more references the higher the quality of the site and the more searches that it can be relevant to.  The quality of these references is also important.  Other resource sites, like Yahoo, or other sites in your industry showing links to your sites will boost your rankings.  However, the search engine must know the link exists so be sure that the people you are generating links with are also submitting to that engine.

Will utilizing the above techniques get your # 1 rankings?  Would that it were that easy.  These strategies are not the solution but guidelines as to some of the major criteria you should evaluate prior to submitting your site to the search engines.  My recommendation after you read this is to go out to the search engine you want to target, review the top ranking sites with these criteria in mind and then compare your own site to what they are doing.  That way, when you submit, if you have equaled their scoring for the above, you can feel confident that you will rank similarly.  Additionally, if you don’t rank as you had hoped, you will know some of the criteria that the search engines are using and be able to look for the weak points in your presentation.