Gees , the search engine proclaims to itself, this new guy on the block really must be good, cause all these folks are linking to it. Shortly thereafter, while you're snoozing, the engine's robot eases onto your site, and eats your pages. This is another one of those ya gotta give to get deals. More precisely, you'll have to actually submit your site to engines, so they will know NOW that you exist. Like everything else, you can pay a service to do this for you, or you can do it yourself.
Freebies abound, some advertiser supported, others strictly labors of love.
There is one commercial product which kept popping up on the shelves of places like CompUSA and Staples back in '99. I was bitten. I now stick with the freebies. Freebies also come in the form of on-line services, which will submit your site, simultaneously, to the major search engines. Power up your favorite plain text editor.