5. Ask owner of web site if they would want to trade advertising. If you don't get as much traffic as they do, you could throw in some extra incentives.

6. Propose a cross promotion deal with web site. You both could promote each others products or services together in one package deal. This means a mention and link back to your web site.

7. Give web site a testimonial for their product or service. Include a little text link for your web site with testimonial. You never know; it could end up on their ad copy.

8. Post your advertisement on their free classified ad section on their web site. You want to be sure you have an attractive headline so they will read your ad.

9. Post your text link on their free-for-all links page. You want to go back and post your link regularly so it stays towards top.

10. Sign their guest books. You could leave a short compliment about their web site on their guest book. Just include your signature file and link at end of your message.

You have three options at that point.

Number one - You can keep on trying. Who knows, maybe eventually you will get it right. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Number two - You can hire a search engine specialist. They do exist and I have heard that some of them are very, very good. These high priest of search engine world can get you a nice high ranking and keep you there. I have also heard that their fees are very, very high. Of course, it may be worth money.

Number three - You can turn to pay-per-click type of search engine.

The frustration of trying to get a decent ranking on traditional engines has given rise to a new breed called pay-per-click. It only takes a few minutes to get listed on these guys. You open an account, make a deposit of from $10 to $25.00 ($50.00 is now required amount on GoTo.com) and then you list your keywords.

Your ranking under each keyword is determined by how much you are willing to bid on each listing (bids can be as low as 1 cent on most of these sites, 5 cents on GoTo.com).

The great part is you only pay for results. Plus, all of pay-per-clicks I have seen, have a members area where you can log in and check on amount of traffic each keyword is delivering to your site. If any of your keywords are not producing, just change it to what you think will be a better choice.

As you can see pay-per-clicks do cost a little money, but it is money spent on results, not on speculation. Here are URLs of a few you should check out if you are thinking about exploring this avenue.

http://www.GoTo.com http://PowerSearchExpress.com http://www.SearchFeed.com http://SearchHound.com

Regardless of what you decide to do about your quest for a high listing on search engines and to rid your life of those search engine blues, don't ignore them. They are too important to keep out of your marketing mix. If your decision is to keep on banging your head against "big boys," God love you, I admire tenacity. I just don't have time for it. But, let me know how you do.