Where does your Web site show up on a search? If your company doesn’t pop to the top of the list when potential customers are surfing the Net, you may be losing business to your competitors. So marketing your Web site to search engines has now become an important link to reaching your customers.

Many people have built Web sites, but a very small percentage have gone to the trouble of actually marketing them to the search engines. It’s of primary importance because the most valuable real estate in the world is the first few pages of an Internet search.

Determining the key words is the first step. Log on to a search engine, type in key words that relate to your business, and see what type of companies come up. Is that where you want to be? Then figure out where to position these key words on your Web page. This is not a process that can be automated and it may take a professional a full day’s work to attain desired results.

Affiliate marketing is another technique whereby the Internet becomes a virtual electronic sales force. If you sold diving watches and had significant traffic, you could connect to amazon.com and earn a commission on book sales that resulted from passing through your site. Or if you want to have diving enthusiasts come to you from various sites, you can arrange a deal with diving club Web sites to receive a sales percentage if your logo appears on their Web site.

There is constant play among people who want to show up first and the search engines who want to be sure the right people show up.

As seen in COSE Update February 1, 2000