I got the headline from a public domain book I have just compiled into a pdf file and placed on my server for free download and it was written by P.T. Barnum the famous American showman entitled "The Art Of Money Getting". In it he details how he once walked down the street past some shops and noticed a large sign hanging from the awning and it simply said in very large letters: "Don't Read The Other Side!" He noticed there was a group of people on the other side of the sign looking up and reading 'The Other Side'!

What do you have to do to get noticed in business? If you run a web business, how do you get noticed by potential customers and, importantly, the search engine robots?

You've probably tried advertising, and link exchanges, and even writing articles. Even chatting on forums to make out you're an 'expert' in your field.

It still is not enough is it?

You really need to network yourself all over the web to get traffic to your site.

Let me explain. Search engine's seem to be giving less credence to link exchanges, therefore it does not seem to be the way to go for the future.

Why not instead swap articles with each other, it gives more 'content' than a link any day?

What you can do is place all the articles you receive on a separate page, thereby building more 'content' and at the same time, other web site owners are placing your articles on their site.

Subject of articles must be 'relevant' to the theme of each others sites, for example, if you sell paperback books, you want sites very similar to your own to publish your article, and you do the same for them.

Start with the link exchange partners to exchange articles with, and network from there. I am sure they will agree that it is an improvement on just link swapping.

When you have placed articles on your web site, make it known that these articles can be published in ezines, web sites, or online newspapers as long as the 'resource box' is left in. It is a slow, but sure process of networking that you and all the web site owners who publish your article will be indulging in, but in the long run will lead to more traffic to your site. Every web site owner who participates in this idea of swapping articles instead of links, should extol the virtues of 'article swapping' on a page on their web site to encourage others to join in.

Much like at the moment there are any number of 'opt-in' mailing list builders schemes going the rounds on the internet, you could always start your own similar scheme, but with article swapping being the currency of the day.

Search engine's will find more link-backs to your site with 'relevant' content, the 'click-thru' rate will increase as people stop by a web site with your article on, leading inevitably to higher search engine ranking, and much more traffic to your site.

I am just about to implement this idea for my own site and exchange articles with like-minded sites. This idea could soon take off and grow to really large proportions that any web site owner is going to be very busy indeed dealing with all the requests, but it is a necessary requirement that as a web site owner you find the time to do this, otherwise the fast travelling engine you are on is going to stop.

It may occasionally and at determined intervals, be necessary to change articles for something new, this could be a requirement of the scheme that one new article is submitted each and every month and changed for the old one, this would eliminate 'staleness' not only to online shoppers but also to the search engine's.

It's been my experience that once a web site has been put up, the site owners think there is nothing more to do, they don't realise that 'staleness' to the search engine's leads to lower and yet lower rankings, therefore it is imperative to change content on a web site frequently.