On the In

Q: I’m a good googler. I can find just about anything I’m looking for on the web, but I don’t have any idea about how to place information on the web. For example, an ad for a vacation rental. Is this something you could explain?
Chris T.
A: The short answer to your question is that information is most commonly placed online via a webpage or website. The problem is the short answer is sort of an over simplification. I assume that what ever information that you are considering placing online, you would like it to be seen by a significant amount of people. There are a multitude of information and webpages that are online, but they aren’t seen.
The reasons for this vary. Some information is not meant for public consumption and other webpages just get overlooked in the horde of information that is available. This dynamic has led to the emergence of a relatively new subset in the online technology field. This field is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short. What SEO companies do is help your information reach more people. Like you, many people rely on search engines like Google, Yahoo, or Dogpile to find websites on their topic of interest. The problem is that there can literally be tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of pages that cater to a particular topic.
To compound the issue, most searchers don’t refine their searches to narrow the scope of what they are looking for, and thus you have large search results. Also, most searchers don’t venture beyond the first couple of pages of their results. So, your information could be online, but not listed high on search engine results list. Enter SEO companies stage left. They help to design webpages so that they have a greater chance of being closer to the top of the search results.
Such specialized skills don’t come cheap, so if you aren’t launching a corporate website I wouldn’t advise hiring a SEO firm to get your message out. There are several good books that may meet your needs that can be picked up from your local library free of charge. Both the “Dummies guide” and “Idiots guide” series cover search engine optimization. Not that you are either of the later, but the books provide a solid step by step instruction for raising your sites online profile.
If you don’t have a website yet, there are a plethora of options that range in price. Free sites can be found on Yahoo.com under the geocities link on the left side of the page. The downside is that they advertise on your webpage. Companies like godaddy.com offer low cost packages that include the web address, web hosting, and email addresses.
If you are thinking specifically of online ads, then Google Adsense is the industry standard. Yahoo and MSN also have their own advertising programs, but all of the ads normally link to a webpage.