1. Get others to link to you. Have a lot of real content on your site. Have something that people want to come back for (like competitions or forums), and try to build user loyalty in some way. Affiliate with someone who might want to trade traffic with you. Put your site URL in your signature and post in a lot of relevant forums (just make sure it's okay with the rules of that forum first)
2. Basically the same as above. But you will need to submit your site to search engines without breaking their rules...and it takes a LONG time to get good a ranking. These days you can find discussion topics from Hypography almost instantly on Google, but it took about 6 months to get registered in the first place.
Now we're listed in almost all major search engines.
I have used Web Position Gold with some success but it's been a while since I used it now
http://www.webposition.com/
3. There are loads...google "search engine optimisation" or "search engine ranking" and you should find plenty. Here is one which is okay:
http://searchenginewatch.com/
