You can have the best website on the face of the Earth, but if no one knows about it, what good is it?

If you aren't on that first page, it doesn't matter if you're number 21 or number 2,021, your chances of getting a hit are just about the same.

What are your chances of being on that first page? One in a hundred? One in a thousand? One in a hundred thousand? Think you have a snow ball's chance in, well... you know where?

Here's a way to find out, a test you can do in less than ten minutes. Type some words into your favorite search engine and see how many sites come up.

I typed "work from home" into mine and guess how many sites came up? 90,933. Hmmmm. Guess you'd better not make your site about that.

How about "software?" 86,684. Not much better. "Publishing?" 76,267. Too bad, e-books are the new thing...

Let's narrow it down to "Publishing Romance." 2,170. Hey now! That's an improvement! Still...

Looks like you'll have to specialize. What about "How to bath my dog?" 1,531. Imagine that. Even with as many as 15 sites to a page, even if you're in the top 10%, people will have to go through 10 pages to get to you.

Do you think someone's going to scroll through 150 sites to get to your site? Would YOU scroll through 150 sites to get to it? Me neither.

Let's do something weird, like.... "Tasmanian Devil." 70 sites. That's better, but you still have to be in the top 20% to be on the first page.

What else do you know? I'm half Hungarian. How about "Hungarian Goulash?" Only 32 sites! Now we're getting somewhere.

A little more specialized and we'll have it. I'm not going to list all the searches I did, but Hungarian Goulash came in with the least number of sites.

Would you believe that more sites came up for frog manure? Yep, 42. There are more sites with frog manure in them than there are with Hungarian Goulash.

But wait, that's just one search engine, let's try more.

My Favorite Search Engine: 32

Popular Search Engine Number Two: 75,400

What? Oh, I see. Quite a lot of restaurants serving Goulash. Maybe we should have typed in Hungarian+Goulash. That's a better idea.

Forget about the people who don't know how to use the plus sign. We don't need their traffic. We're only going after the ones who use a plus sign.

Okay, Hungarian+Goulash

Popular Search Engine Number Two: 560. That narrows it down a bit.

My Favorite Search Engine: 62. What? I got more results WITH the plus sign.

Popular Search Engine Number Three: 131 Popular Search Engine Number Four: 1,880 Popular Search Engine Number Five: 3,275

Geez Louise, it just keeps getting worse. Never mind. We'll concentrate on My Favorite Search Engine. That's what anybody worth his salt uses anyway, right?

The title of this article is "How to be Number One in a Search Engine", so here's how. The search engine is My Favorite Search Engine (sorry, my attorney advised me not to say which particular search engine that is) and the tag words are Hungarian+Goulash+frog+manure. (Would you believe Popular Search Engine Number Five came up with 21 results for that?)

Am I trying to be funny? No (well, maybe just a tad... to get my point across). Am I suggesting you sell Hungarian Goulash Frog Manure? No. Am I suggesting you sprinkle your pages, title and tags with the words "Hungarian Goulash Frog Manure" and sell something else? No. Do you think people typing in "Hungarian Goulash" (or even frog manure, for that matter) are going to be interested in "How to Win Blue Ribbons at Horse Shows?" (which, by the way, came up 215 in my search engine). No. Am I suggesting you hire a specialist? According to my search engine, there are 1,659 search engine ranking services. If they're so good, why aren't all of THEM on the first page?

Okay, I see your point. Only the best are on the first page. That makes sense. So, your advice would be to fork out anywhere from $200 to $1000 to a ranking service.

Before I whip out my credit card, I have one question. How long will it take my competitors to hire mine or another service to squeeze me out of my ranking tomorrow, next week, or next month?

What AM I suggesting? I'm suggesting that you have a better plan. I'm suggesting that you don't rely on search engines for traffic.

Oh, and as for those `tips, tricks and techniques' manuals and software to getting you on that first page? If the experts, the computer programmers, the html egg heads, if only 1% of THEM made it to the first page, what do you think YOUR chances are?

If you're looking for something, search engines are great! Thank goodness for search engines! I couldn't live without them (well, it would be an empty existence). But if you're selling something, better look again.

So, how DO you get people to look at your website? Here are 10 ways:

1. Buy advertising banners from HIGH TRAFFIC websites that aren't in competition with you but DO attract your target audience.

2. Email AND snail mail your customers. Tell them about your website. Do NOT confuse this with spamming. I'm talking about customers you already have to whom you would normally send correspondence to.

3. Use your URL as a signature on ALL your email AND snail mail.

4. Advertise in ezines. They give you excellent value for your advertising dollars.

5. Offer free advertising on your site in return for referrals or cooperative mailings (NOT spammings).

6. Participate intelligently on discussion boards that attract your target audience and use your URL as your signature.

7. Advertise in classified ads on and off line (you'll find a FREE tool to manage all your online classified ads in one convenient place at: http://216.117.171.207/ )

8. Put your url on EVERYTHING, your business cards, letterhead, car windshield (I actually looked up a website I saw on a back windshield once), bumper sticker...

9. Offer free shareware downloads from your site in return for visitors emailing 2 or 3 friends about your website and sending a CC to you for verification.

10. Make sure your server has chat room and message boards and use them to increase traffic.

I'll bet you can even think of more ways to increase traffic if you put your mind to it. Another resource for how to increase traffic AND sell your products like crazy is http://216.117.171.207/amazing/

Some things NOT to do would be:

1. DON'T spam (send out unsolicited email).

2. DON'T use free for all banners (if they were any good, they wouldn't be free). They don't hurt, but your time is more productive elsewhere. If you're really bored and are caught up with your other efforts, then go ahead.

3. DON'T use opt in email lists, unless of course you LIKE to be inundated with soliciting emails filling up your mailbox by the hour so you have to sort through them to find your REAL email...

4. DON'T waste precious time and money trying to get yourself ranked number one in the search engines, unless you're selling Hungarian Goulash Frog Manure, even then... (notice I said "precious time and money" - if you want to spend time and money playing with getting ranked, and you can afford both, go ahead - personally, I wouldn't bother)

5. DON'T fill your website with so many banners and ads for OTHER sites, that no one knows what YOUR site is about. Hey, you work hard to get visitors, don't tempt them to click out through someone else's banner!

See? There are twice as many do's as there are don'ts. Stop worrying about increasing traffic by way of search engines.

You need to increase traffic, but place your time, money and energy where it will be productive.

...or, you can sell Hungarian Goulash Frog Manure...