Existing search engine traffic is fine, but it may not be all that targeted. What's more, you don't always have time to optimize your site for all engines, and some search engine tactics may actually backfire (get you blacklisted). To save time, you will want to consider buying some traffic.

Some users of pay-for-placement search engines are turned off by experience. This may be because they're deploying strategy too tentatively. If you want to get to a certain level, why not just get there this month, instead of taking baby steps? I know people who are bidding on 3 or 4 keywords at Goto.com. I know others - not tycoons, just energetic folks with a few extra bucks a month to spare - who are bidding on 300-400 keyword combinations. Guess who is really noticing impact of this strategy?

There are many smaller pay-for-placement engines, and outside of Findwhat.com, they aren't worth effort for trickle of traffic they'll bring you. You should also consider sponsored links initiative ("Sprinks") at About.com, which allows you to bid for link placement on a topical About.com "guide site."

At Goto.com, since you only pay for clickthroughs, risk is minimal provided you can deliver something of interest once visitor arrives at your site. While I'm not going to give you step-by-step here, there is a way to build that list of keywords (and daily targeted clickthroughs) up to an impressive level, while slowly whittling down average cost per click to a manageable five or six cents. At those rates, your banner revenues alone will probably offset money you spend on this advertising.

If you're bent on faster results, and willing to pay 15-20 cents per click, though, by all means up your bids to ensure that you're in top three, or even #1 spot for a given keyword. The reason your traffic will increase dramatically if you do this is because you'll also be showing up in meta-search engines like Mamma, Ixquick, profusion, c4, Dogpile, and Metacrawler.

Because these avenues are going to be a bit different from other pathways web surfers take to find you through search engines, for first few months you will be getting a lot of incremental traffic. That is to say, new, highly targeted customers.

You may not be AOL, or even a well-funded startup. But you CAN find $50 a month, and on Goto.com, $50 can go a long way. Go ahead, give this a try and see if you don't achieve your goals more quickly.

There are a few other things to watch out for to avoid having your pages excluded from engines. The following are things that make an engine tag a particular page as spam and therefore not index it. Make sure that none of your pages has any of these.

1. Keyword stuffing. This is repeated use of a word to increase its frequency on a page. Search engines have ability to analyze a page and determine whether frequency is above a "normal" level in proportion to rest of words in document.

2. Invisible text. Some webmasters stuff keywords at bottom of a page and make their text color same as that of page background. This is also detectable by engines.

3. Tiny text. Same as invisible text but with tiny, illegible text.

4. Page redirects. Some engines, especially Infoseek, do not like pages that take user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. using META refresh tags, cgi scripts, Java, JavaScript, or server side techniques. If you use redirection, it should have a delay of about 7 seconds.

5. META tags stuffing. Do not repeat your keywords in META tags more than 1 to 3 times, and do not use keywords that are unrelated to content of your site.

6. Do not submit same page more than once on same day to same search engine.

7. Do not submit virtually identical pages, i.e. do not simply duplicate a web page, give copies different file names, and submit them all. That will be interpreted as an attempt to flood engine.

Below are several useful facts and tips for each major search engine that you can use to improve your search engine marketing.

- AltaVista (www.altavista.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 150 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1-2 days Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 1 day to 1 month How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type: '+url: yourcompany.com/yourpage.htm'. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'link:yourcompany.com'. You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page like: 'link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -url command like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com' Supports frame pages: Yes Supports image maps: Yes

- HotBot (www.hotbot.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 110 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 2 days to 2 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): About 2 weeks How to check if your page is on index: Select advanced search options and enter your page's URL. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'linkdomain:yourcompany.com'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -domain command like: 'linkdomain:yourcompany.com -domain:yourcompany.com'. These methods get you all pages linking to your domain. To find links to only a particular page, enter your URL into search box, then choose "links to this URL" option. Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: No

- Infoseek (www.infoseek.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 75 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 1 day for pages submitted online, 7 days for email submissions. Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Rarely spiders, if it does then 1 - 2 months How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type: 'URL: http://www.yourcompany.com/page.htm'. How to check how many pages link to your site: In search box, type: 'link:yourcompany.com'. You can narrow your search to a particular directory or page like: 'link:yourcompany.com/ourpage.htm'. To eliminate from results all pages within your own domain that link to each other, use -url command like: 'link:yourcompany.com -url:yourcompany.com' Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: Yes

- Excite (www.excite.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 55 Time it takes to index a submitted page: About 2 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): Up to 6 weeks How to check if your page is on index: In search box, type in full URL of page. How to check how many pages link to your site: N/A Supports frame pages: No Supports image maps: No

- Lycos (www.lycos.com) Facts

Pages in index in millions: 50 Time it takes to index a submitted page: 2-4 weeks Time it takes to index crawled pages (may take longer than indicated): 2-4 weeks How to check if your page is on index: Not available. How to check how many pages link to your site: N/A Supports frame pages: No (limited) Supports image maps: No

- Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) Facts

Yahoo is most popular directory on web. Many people have problems getting their site listed. A rough estimate is that only 1 out of every 10 submissions gets listed, if that. Moreover, it takes an estimated 4 to 15 weeks to be listed for those who actually get listed! Those who got listed had to resubmit their site an estimated 4 times over several weeks or months before getting listed (resubmitting too often is spamming, by way). One this is for sure - you must get into Yahoo! For some sites, Yahoo actually brings them over 50% of their business. By way, Yahoo now has an express submission service whereby you pay $199 for a response to your submission within 7 weeks. It doesn't guarantee that you will be listed with them, but at least you get to know within 7 days whether you are in or if not, why. Here is a set of links that you need to visit to learn how to successfully get into Yahoo.

http://help.yahoo.com/help/search/url/ http://howto.yahoo.com/chapters/10/1.html http://searchenginewatch.com/sereport/9903-yahoo.html