I am looking to be a nanny/babysitter for the summer and I would like to make a simple website that is searchable by parents looking for help for the summer. I am not sure how to go about this but It would be really great if anyone could help me out. I am not looking to do anything fancy, just have some general info and a way to contact me. Is there a way to do this free? I know there is geocities, but is that searchable? I am not good at all when it comes to this stuff, so any ideas or help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance fellow dopers 
To make your website searchable all you really need to do (or can do, for that matter), is submit it to the search engines. There are a number of sites which will allow you to submit to multiple search engines at once – www.register-it.com is one I can think of off the top of my head, and it’s free. You can also go and submit your site individually to engines such as Google and Webcrawler – there is typically a link “add a website” or “add URL” at the bottom of the front page. You won’t be able to submit to Yahoo! though, since your site is business-related, unless you’re willing to fork over a couple hundred bucks.
The real trick is not making yourself searchable, but finding ways to put your site at the top of the list when you ARE searched. (Typically, if you’re not within the top 10, at most, no one will even bother to open your site, unless they’re REALLY motivated and the sites above you weren’t what they were looking for.) You can use META tags for keywords and descriptions, although I’ve heard that search bots pay less attention to META tags nowadays and more to the actual content of the page (can anyone confirm this?). So, while a very specific search (freelance nanny in [your city]) may put your site at the top of the hit list, a more general one (nannies, California) won’t.
The other factor is time. The longer your site exists, the more search engines will crawl, log, and catalogue your site, more people will accidently stumble upon it and remember to mention it to their friends, etc. You’ll get a lot more hits 6 months to a year from now than you will in the first 3 months or so.
Whether or not you upload your site to a freeserver like geocities is irrelevant to how searchable it is. (Although I will say that most people absolutely loathe pop-up ads, so choose your host carefully. If I go to your website and am immediately innundated with 5 pop-ups opening at once, odds are slim I’ll stick around to actually read your site.)
Thanks sooooo much, your were a huge help and I really appreciate your time in explaining that to me! Its so nice to know that there are some really great people out there willing to take a min to help someone out
You could advertise on the online Straight Dope 