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Do it by hand. It will not take long to do and will ensure that you are successful in submitting each form with the correct information. There is a constant debate about how search engines feel about automated submission software. Since there is a reasonable chance these are frowned upon by the search engines, and since you can do anything they can do on your own, you might as well avoid them.
This is another common myth that is untrue. The only time a domain extension can affect your ranking is if the search is based by country. The country-specific TLDs (e.g. .co.uk) will have priority over non-country specific TLDs (e.g. .com or .net).
One observation many make is that .coms tend to rank higher then other domain extensions. They assume it is because .coms are given preferential treatment. This is a poor assumption. .coms seem to rank higher then other extensions because they are by for more popular then any other domain extension (there are more .coms than .net, .org, .biz, .edu, .gov, and .info combined) so they naturally have a greater chance of ranking higher vs other domain extensions through sheer quantity alone. .coms also tend to be older sites so they have had a chance to establish themselves whereas newer domain extensions have not. They have also used this time to acquire more backlinks which is an important factor in search engine algorithms.
It is also commonly believed that .gov and .edu sites are given preferential treatment from search engines. This is also untrue. Web pages on .edu and .gov domains tend to rank well because they contain quality content and many webmasters will link to their content as a result. Both of these are key elements in SEO. But the fact that they are .edu or .gov domains does not benefit them directly in the SERPs.
“Fighting for a #1 position often unwittingly wins you other prizes along the way.” Though your assumptions we’re equally correct, my actual intention for this was in reference to longtail keywords. If you’re shooting for the #1 most popular keyword, you often pick up less significant longtail keyword searches along the way (if your content is diverse and of quality.)
Also, as far as forum signatures and blog posting, I still believe this is a valid way of driving traffic as well as increasing exposure to fellow relevant webmasters, but this is only so if you contribute quality info. When SEO’s spam with poor quality information purely to advertise, they’re likely to be deleted. Also, most of these areas are set up to not allow link juice to pass from your link. Therefore, it’s only worth the traffic, and that only comes from good content.
The large majority of search engines do not use Meta Tags as part of their ranking algorithm. Some will claim Google uses Meta tags in its algorithm. This is entirely untrue.
Google, however, will use a meta description tag if it is unable to discern a description for a webpage on its own (if the page has no text and no description in the open directory [dmoz] it is likely Google will use the meta description tag in its SERPs). Please note that it is only using this description in its SERPs, not its algorithm.
Should you use Meta Tags in your site? Yes. They do have some affect in some search engines and even though that effect is almost zero it is still more then zero so is worth the time.
How much time should I spend on my Meta Tags? Ten minutes. Write a nice concise description of your page and throw in a sampling of keywords (which you should have handy if you’ve optimized your pages properly). You should spend no more time then this on them. Use your time to promote your site and get quality inbound links.
How many keywords should I use? As many as you want. If you start to think you may have too many, you probably do. This means you need to divide your page into subpages with each one taking its own topic.