Online auction sites generally do not let you add links to a Web site in your auction listings. So, your auction experiences may have given you little or no experience in how advertising is purchased and placed on the Web. The paramount rules are to (1) help search engines such as Google and Yahoo! find your business as easily as possible and to (2) position its information as near the top as possible in displayed listings. For example, if your online store sells or auctions specialized home-and-garden items, the name and URL of your business might show up at the 19,000th position in a list of 1,136,000 Web sites with “home and garden” somewhere in their descriptive text. Of course, even the most dedicated people using Google or Yahoo! to find a home-and-garden supplier probably will not scroll down below the first 100 or so businesses in the list. Therefore, your enterprise will remain out of sight and out of mind for them unless they accidentally find it while browsing the Web.

Building Your Link Popularity

Owners of small businesses often adopt a simple and free but time-consuming technique to improve their visibility on search engines. They arrange link exchanges with other online businesses. Web sites typically have link pages or link lists where the names and URLs of other businesses can be displayed. In a link exchange, the owners of two different Web sites (not in competition with each other!) agree to add each other's site name and site address to their link list. The most apparent goal is for a visitor to one site to find the link to the other site and click on it. Each Web site thus helps the other generate Web traffic and business.

However, search engines also use link popularity as one of their guidelines for determining where to position a listing. Therefore, the positioning of your Web site can vary from search to search. But the more links you can establish, the more often the search engines will see the name and URL of your business, and they will give it a higher “page ranking” when responding to someone's search request.

Exchanging Links

There are at least three general ways to exchange Web site links:

• Contact other Web site owners and ask for an exchange.

• Use a link exchange directory.

• Hire a link exchange service.

Most link exchanges are set up via e-mail. You simply send a message to another business briefly describing your business and giving its URL. You ask the recipient for permission to post his business's URL on your links page, and you ask if he would be willing to post a link to your business on his links page. The drawback to this approach, of course, is time. It can take many hours just to find some appropriate sites, send the e-mail, and do the work necessary to add the approved links to your Web site.

Adding your business name and URL to link directories will not eliminate all the work of creating link exchanges. But the link directories can help spread the visibility of your Web site and indicate greater link popularity to search engines.

Some sites, such as Iconcave.com and Link2Me.com, operate free link exchange directories where you can post the URL for your Web-based business. Often, but not always, you are expected to add the link exchange directory's URL to your links page in return.

Hiring a link exchange service may be a more efficient and cost-effective way to add good links and increase your site's link popularity, but be careful. Many of these services are available on the Web. Research them carefully before committing any money. Typically, they will charge fees in return for providing links to certain numbers of sites that are relevant to your business. The more you pay, the more links you will get. Often, you will not be required to create any return links on your site, but you may wish to, so the spiders from the search engines will keep finding them each week and including them in your link popularity total.

Some link exchange services can provide you with links to companies that consistently have very high page rankings in the major search engines. You likely will have to pay, however, to keep the link active, and it won't be cheap. Monthly fees ranging from $50 to $5,000 per link are not uncommon.

Ways to Advertise on the Web

For several years, the hot trend in Web advertising was to send text advertisements using e-mail addresses purchased in bulk. Sometimes, the lists contained hundreds of thousands or even millions of contacts. But it was blind scatter-shooting, and most of the sales pitches reached uninterested or unqualified addressees or inactive accounts. Still, companies persisted, because it was cheap and easy to keep pumping out the messages. Finally, weary spam recipients starting resisting by blocking the messages, responding with phony information, or sending back hundreds of replies to overload the senders' systems. Anti-spam software was quickly improved and became readily available. Meanwhile, complaints to Congress led to legislation severely restricting the use of bulk e-mail messages.

Along with link exchanges, other methods are now popular for advertising products and services on the Web. Some of these methods include:

• Banner advertisements

• Banner exchanges

• Pop-up and pop-under advertisements

• Advertising in online directories

• Pay-per-click advertising

Unfortunately, Web-based advertising can get very expensive very quickly, especially if you attempt several different methods at one time to get the word out about your business. Do not commit to any method of online advertising until you have studied it carefully and determined how it might actually bring in enough sales to pay for itself and generate a profit.

Banner Advertising

Banner ads are big, colorful notices that stretch across most of the top or bottom of a Web page. For example, on a Web site devoted to screenwriters, a banner ad for a bookstore may appear in a box across the very top, while another banner ad for a writing seminar may be positioned at the bottom of the page. Some of the advertisements may be static displays of text and images. Others may use flashing words, changing pictures, or other techniques to grab the viewer's attention.

Unless you have a background in advertising, you will probably need help to design and post an effective banner advertisement for your business on other Web sites. If you can't find a skilled friend or college student willing to do the work for the experience or a future reference, you may have to hire a Web content creator who specializes in advertising. You will find no shortage of people willing to sell you their services. (For example, a Yahoo! search of the term banner ad design turns up more than 10 million hits.) The usual rules apply: Ask to see samples, ask for — and follow up — on referrals to satisfied customers, and ask for pricing.

Some online services promise they can create effective banner advertisements in a matter of hours. At least one site, BuyerZone.com, lets you post information about the type of banner ad, the assistance you need, and how quickly you need it. You will then receive bids from companies wanting to do the work.

Pop-Ups and Unders

For many years, online advertisers have been blitzing Web users' screens with ads that automatically pop up on top of a Web page display or hide beneath it until the page is closed. Many computer users have learned to hate these ads as much as they hate spam e-mail messages. Software to block pop-up and pop-under ads is now popular, and Microsoft added similar ad-blocking features to its XP operating system in 2004. Campaigns to eradicate pop-ups and pop-unders are expected to continue, so relying on these ads to promote your business may not be a good or cost-effective strategy.

Advertising in Online Directories

If part of your business strategy includes offering products or services in your own city or region, you may want to consider advertising in an online directory, such as local online Yellow Pages, or Yahoo! Local Listings, or in smaller directories operated by local companies. Likewise, you may be able to list your business free in certain online directories sponsored by county, city, or private agencies.

You can buy listings in online directories that have a business-to-business focus. For example, Business.com offers inclusion in an annual online directory for a flat fee ($199 in 2005). The directory “contains more than 400,000 listings within 65,000 industry, product and service categories” and is accessible only to other members of Business.com who are using its business-focused search engine, the company states.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

When you advertise in online directories or on many other Web sites (including Google and Yahoo!), you often have the option to sign up for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. With PPC, you generally can set your own advertising budget and decide how much each “click” is worth to you. Then, each time someone finds your link and clicks on it, the cost of the click is deducted from your account. If your PPC budget runs out, your listing disappears or your link no longer works until you pay more money.

At some sites, you may be able to sign up for as little as $5 per month and have as little as a penny deducted each time a prospective customer clicks on your link. Google recommends setting a PPC budget of at least $30 per day on its site.