Hey its been a while since I've been around but I hope you guys can be as informative now as you used to be.
I have opened my own sporting goods store and am working on getting my online store up and running. My problem, getting on search engines!
Since when did it cost money to get a listing? I know its been a few years since I designed a page, but what the hell? Yahoo wants $300 a year just to list my page! WTF?
Does anyone know any loopholes or have any advice?

Jake

Get a program like WebSubmission Gold or Submit Wolf. Figure out what keywords would describe your site best, or better yet, what keywords would people type into a search engine if they were looking for your site.
Integrate those into your site as metatags, ( I could show you how, but this forum would convert the HTML examples in actual code, so you wouldn't see it), run the submitter programs I mentioned like once a month or so (for starters). Many search engines value links, so get other pages to link to yours.
Some search engines require manual submission, like Altavista. Do that, too.
Also, if you punch in your keywords/search terms (say, you were selling PBJ sandwiches from Israel, type "pbj+israel" without the quotes) the search engine will come up with a couple of pages as results, click on your page, once it comes up, and often. This also helps somewhat to improve your ranking when done often enough. (site popularity)

I already have it meta tagged and a meta description. Here are my meta tags:knives,knife,fishing,tackle,paint ball,sword,movie swords,Galco,gunleather,sentry,sentry solutions,lubricant,protectant,collectable,outdoor,hunting,tsunami,jarvis walker,spidercast,cutlery,binoculars,optics,scope,BSA,simmons,tasco,leupold,bushnell,quantum,shakespere,fishbonz,silstar,nascar,dale earnhardt,throwing stars,ninja,buck,catfish,ka-bar,ka bar,camillus,frost,chipawae,mitchell,reel,united,pin-up,pin up,tactical,kissing crane,kershaw,ken onion,onion,automatic,speed assist,buck creek,boker,tree brand,case,columbia river,crkt,cold steel,spyderco,gerber,shrade,old timer,uncle henry,hen and rooster,victorinox,trophy,fishing,ammo,winchester,federal,ammunition,harley davidson,brass eagle,abu garcia,diawa,henckels,twin brand,zwilling J. A. henckels,solingen,virginia,grundy,breaks, interstate,park,buchanan,dickenson,wise,russell,county,lures,bait,line,sports,action,outdoors,fun,appalachia,on-line,catalog,secure
let me know if you know of any more.

Jake

I think terms like uncle henry have to be in "quotes" to be recognized as one term.
Check for the number of "allowed keywords". Some search engines ignore you, if there are too many. Also, do a Google search on "spider.txt", to figure out how to set up a file to handle the search engine's spiders. (I keep getting '404 spider.txt not found' in the access logs of my pages, but didn't bother to set one up yet.)

One more thing: Even if they are nice to have as navigational tool, do not, repeat not, use frames. Search engines can't handle these.

Well as far as who is hosting me, I am using OLM. Mark at Sentry Solutions gave them a great recomendation. I did get a 100 search engine submission tool but I kinda worry that my "commercial site" will be rejected by the engines that want me to pay for their listings such as google/ yahoo. As far as frames go the site will be done in frames just to aid in navigation, navigation in one frame and catalog in another. My web guru is working on the layout as we speak. It just didn't seem logical to have the entire site running on a secure server when the shopping cart is all that needs to be on it.

Keep the ideas coming though.

Jake

I remember reading something recently that said the folks at google (and presumably other search places) weren't paying attention to meta tags anymore.  Supposedly they are using more intelligent agents that search through the actual content of your site.  I guess this is because people were going overboard with the meta tag thing, and putting in words that had nothing to do with their site.  Hope this helps.

Not for nothing..300 bucks a year?  that's less than a dollar a day.  You could make that up in one good sale.  You gotta spend some to make some.