Search engines are the phone books of the internet, and Google is everybody's favorite phone book.

Google takes a fairly simple philosophy and extends it with remarkable execution. The words you use in your website are a primary indicator of what your website is about. The more unique the words, the more it's likely that they're significant to the meaning of the website. A website that talks about mufflers, brake linings, and oil is going to do well on those topics. A website that talks about Pittsburgh, pasta and pizza, and the family's Italian roots is going to do well on a search for "Pittsburgh Italian food".

Google's other main concept is that a link to your site, from somebody else's site, is like a vote of confidence in your site. The more people that link to your site, the more votes you've received. It's good to have a lot of votes, but it's not good to try to rig the election. Google has a lot of bright people, and you're not likely to fool them.

You don't have to pay get listed in Google. Just go to http://www.google.com/addurl/ and give them your web address. There's a lot of people submitting websites, and they don't always get to all the submissions, but if you'll submit your website every day for a few weeks, you'll probably get indexed.

Another way to get Google to review your site is if Google is checking another site that it already knows about, and comes across a link to your website. Google will follow that link, and if your site is well-constructed, Google will crawl all around your site.

An advanced technique for Google listings, which allows you to indicate which of your pages are most important, and which gets you a pretty quick Google update when you change your site, is to use a Google XML Sitemap.