How do you do this? Look up top 20 web sites on major search engines under keywords and phrases people would find your web site. The key would be to then advertise on those web sites.

The most expensive way would be to buy ad space on those web sites. If you don't want to spend any money, you could use ten strategies below. These strategies may not apply to every web site.

1. Participate on their discussion boards. You could post questions, answer other peoples questions, and join in on conversations. Just include your signature file and link at end of your messages.

2. Ask web site owner if they would like a free ebook to giveaway to their visitors. You could have them link to your web site or include your ad in free ebook.

3. Submit content to their web site. You could write articles for their web site and include your resource box and link at end of article. If they publish it, you'll indirectly be at top of search engines.

I have heard that to make it on Internet, a business must have a high ranking on search engines. I have submitted my site to several of top ones, but I never get a high ranking. In fact I don't even think I get ranked at all on most of them.

What can I do?

Signed,

frustrated

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Dear Frustrated,

I know how frustrating it can be trying to get a decent ranking with any of major engines.

You submit your site, then wait weeks for search engine "gods" to render their decision. More likely than not, their decision is to either not list your site at all or to give it a ranking so low that a surfer needs deep diving equipment to find you. It's enough to sent you running for a giant size bottle of Prozac.

Your first reaction will probably be to throw your hands up and say heck with those search engines, who needs them?

Don't make this mistake. We all need our sites listed on search engines. More visitors can be gained through search engines than all other marketing venues put together. Nobody can ignore this vast source of potential customers.

So what can a poor beleaguered Webmaster do?

Most of us turn to search engine gurus at this point. We follow their advice on how to make our web sites search engine ready. We insert META tags into our site code. We struggle to add just right description and keywords so major engines will find us worthy of a high listing. When all i's have been dotted and all t's crossed, we submit again and wait.

Five or six weeks later we discover that once again, "big boys" have found our site lacking in some way or another. It's back to drawing board. We read somewhere - to get approved for a decent listing we need to build some "gateway pages." This only takes a few days to a few weeks to figure out and accomplish, but then, at last it's done and we submit once again.