"I always laugh when I see the term 'driving traffic to your web site'". (Online Promotion).

I always laugh when I see the term "driving traffic to your web site." The term "driving" implies that you have some level of control. You don't have any control, not over the search engines nor over a person's browsing activities. Enticing, luring, baiting--anything but driving.

The search engine market has been changing. The reality is that if you want a good position on a search engine, you have to buy it. On an increasing basis, the "above the fold" search results are all paid positions.

I believe that all the promotions to register your site are scams. They will not help at all.

We have registered sites for years and have gotten no positions. We have other sites that we never registered that regularly are listed in search engines.

Here are some observations:

1. Search engines need good content to keep their readers returning. They have a vested interest in indexing publishers. If you register, they will index you.

2. Search engines are overloaded with registered sites and sites to index.

3. To streamline the load, search engines have optimized what they look at--in this order:

* Domain names. If the search word matches the domain name, it will be returned.

* HTML pages. This means the text between the HTML title tags <TITLE>This is my page </TITLE>. Too many sites use the same title tags on all pages. It is important to always use article titles in the HTML title tags.

* Text in the body of the story. This is text that is found in static HTML pages. They spend time and money registering at search engines and then when the engine comes to index the content, it cannot access it.

Here is how a search engine works when it comes to your site. First, it reads your home page. It indexes the page and then it makes a list of any HTML links on the page. It then works through this list reading each page, indexing the page, and adding more links to the list.

Search engines will not read pages that are produced by applications. They only index static HTML pages. This is where many publishers are left out. If all the links to your content look like this, user/user.fas/nlo=1/fp=2/0207xxxpdf? T=open_summary, 465752&P=summary, then none of these pages is indexed.

Another important point is not to move content around. If you are constantly moving your content and thus changing the URL to stories, links to your stories will be broken. It is important to use a publishing system that implements absolute article addressing for current content and archives.

Stephen Lalibere is president of iProduction, a provider of web publishing applications and services since 1994. Its Internet Publishing System is a customizable, browser-oriented application service that enables editors to operate world-class web sites without programming. 3570 Lexington Ave. North, #220, St. Paul, MN 55126, 651-483-5610, ext. 26, fox 651-483-4320, www.iproduction.com.