Seeking to capture the imagination of educated, adventurous gourmand prospective customers, he instead set out to draw more people to his Web site and his Portland, Ore., shop by writing an informative, entertaining and provocative blog, “Salt News.”

Bitterman knows that people, including reporters, visit both the site and the blog, and many eventually come through the doors to see the 60 or so varieties of salt. “You can’t tell if it gets you new traffic or if it just shapes the expectations of those who come to the shop,” he adds. There are probably as many varieties of marketing a business and increasing sales as there are versions of high-end salt. But you can’t expect to compete as a small business today without choosing from a growing arsenal of online marketing tools. Here are four smart ways to get your business noticed on the Internet.

1. Create a simple, effective Web site.

Does your Web site describe your product or service in a succinct, compelling and visual fashion? Does it answer potential customers’ needs in, say, less than 10 seconds? “Once they click to your Web site, you have between 5 and 8 seconds to convince them you can help,” says Larry Bailin, CEO of SingleThrow Internet Marketing in Wall, N.J., and author of the soon-to-be-published Mommy, Where Do Customers Come From? (Larstan Publishing).

Your home page should include the bare essentials, Bailin says. “People are looking for exactly what they typed in, with calls to action,” he says. “It’s critical that you address their issues on your home page. Get to the point and get rid of anything that doesn’t need to be there.”

Your Web site should be easy to navigate and right on target, and a “Contact Us” button should be prominent. Also, make sure your site appears high on search engines’ results pages. By including keywords and terms in the code, your site will appear higher up on Google and others. These days, any good web designer will be able to handle such search engine marketing as part of the design and programming package. Still, it’s up to you to know the best way to describe your product and service to potential customers and then turn them into qualified sales leads.

“Don’t think too much about the bells and whistles,” warns Bailin. “Think about the connection that you’re going to make and the way you’re going to help people. Make it clear to them and you’ll win every time.”

2. Become a blogger.

Entrepreneurs who blog can reach a new audience by writing in a conversational way and showing the human and personal side of their business, according to William Beutler, senior online analyst for New Media Strategies, a Web 2.0 marketing firm in Arlington, Va.

“Make your industry interesting to people by writing in a conversational manner,” he says. “Give people a glimpse into a world they don’t know.” Beutler believes new businesses can benefit greatly from blogging. “There’s still an untapped audience in a lot of industries that are just starting to grow,” he says. “You have the potential to establish yourself as an expert in the field just by being the first person to write something interesting about your field.”

3. Try podcasting.

Podcasting is a relatively simple technology that is being taken quite seriously by some Fortune 500 companies. And all you really need to get started is a decent microphone, a digital recorder and editing software.

Podcasts allow you to make the most of your inner impresario, plus, your show and the subscriber audience it may lure can give you an edge over competitors.

“Podcasting is still unique enough in many industries that it can allow you to stand out a bit,” says John Jantsch, a Kansas City, Mo., marketing coach and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide (Thomas Nelson).

“Podcasting makes a ton of sense for many small businesses for several reasons,” says Jantsch. “A voice, rather than simple words on a paper can convey emotion and personality. It’s much easier to connect to that.”

Jantsch offers this tip for the podcaster trying to bring attention to his business: “Invite a key strategic partner to be a guest on the podcast and you’re likely to get the attention of high-level experts, authors and even prospects.”

4. Smile, you’re on YouTube!

YouTube is not just for classic media clips, cute pet tricks and bizarre dorm antics anymore. With a YouTube link on your Web site and vice versa, you have a new marketing tool. But don’t be so crass as to post blatant infomercials about your small business.

“What you want to post is something that the people on YouTube will find interesting or useful and will therefore watch,” says Michael Miller, the Indianapolis-based author of YouTube 4 U (Que Publishing). In his book, Miller cites the example of a pottery business that posted a how-to video on throwing pots on a pottery wheel. “That’s what gets them in the door and then you direct them to your Web site from there.”

A startup search engine launched Monday, Cuil (pronounced “cool”), hopes to prove that its search technology is cooler than that of the reigning king of search, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) .

Cuil’s creators — former Google search architect Anna Patterson; her husband Tom Costello, a former researcher and developer at Stanford University and IBM (NYSE: IBM) ; and Russell Power, another former Google executive — claim they have pioneered a new take on the search game, combining the largest index of Web pages — 120 billion — with a content-based relevance methodology.

Search results, organized by ideas, are consequently more meaningful, the company said.

Taking on Google, however, requires more than just a nifty new search engine, said Gene Alvarez, a research vice president at Gartner (NYSE: IT) . Since its launch, Google has expanded its brand to encompass a variety of Web services. Consumers turn to Google for much more than its search engine.

So, while something like Cuil may whittle away at their search market, displacing Google will be an uphill battle.

Cuil Enough?

With a home page sporting a black background and a guarantee of complete user privacy, Cuil appears to be styling itself as the anti-Google. Unlike Google, which keeps an anonymous record of each search conducted by its users, Cuil’s technology relies on a different search methodology, according to its creators.

Rather than returning results ranked by the number of inbound and outbound links of Web pages, as Google does, Cuil’s technology mines data for content-based searches. Results therefore are based on the content of each page, not the popularity of a particular site. It makes Cuil’s search method more efficient and allows the company to not need to collect personal data on searches, it said.

In another contrast, instead of a list of links with brief descriptions, Cuil’s results are laid out in columns, much like a magazine, and separated by subject, which also allows for additional searches by concept or category.

The company has not disclosed its business model, and Cuil representatives did not respond to TechNewsWorld’s request for comment.

Searching for More
Any company seeking to knock Google from its perch atop the search engine world will have to fight long and hard to make it happen. Challengers must answer to Google’s many ancillary Web services as well as its spider web-like ecosystem of business partners.

“Google at this point has not only captured the consumer with its search engine, but its other applications have helped make people comfortable with Google. Whether it’s the add-ons to the browser or using Gmail or Google Apps or the social software, Google’s expanded footprint helps Google fight off these types of attempts,” Alvarez told TechNewsWorld.

For Cuil to be successful, it needs to be able to draw to its site consumers who in the course of an average day have multiple touches with any given Google product. Google’s installed search toolbars, Gmail, Google Docs and other applications all keep users coming back to Google.

“All of that is stuff Cuil is going up against. They have to do one of two [things]: Exceed the quadruple threat, which is quite a challenge in itself, or be able to provide a clearly differentiated search experience from Google,” explained Tom Austin, a Gartner fellow and chief of research in software.

“From a quick look at the site, I didn’t see anything that jumped out at me other than that they changed the white background to black to show it as an opposite to Google. I saw some functionality that looks similar to Ask.com’s attempt to bring in a Web 2.0 rich Internet experience,” he said.

Ask.com’s revamped search efforts — with peeks at Web pages and other added features — were not enough to draw a significant portion of Google’s installed base.

Challenges Ahead
The challenge Cuil faces is much greater than developing a better search engine, Austin said.

“Once upon a time, Google was about search. Today, Google is this extremely large business model that is search-based but is ad revenue-driven and includes hundreds of thousands of other companies in its ecosystem. Anybody who wants to beat Google in search has got to displace the entire business model and business ecosystem Google has built,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“The chance of that happening in the next five years is diminishingly small,” he added.

“If you’re a startup, you’re not competing with Google. You’re competing with all the SEO firms, all the hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs who are buying Google Adwords and Google’s ability to sell this vast network of available pages on which to advertise,” he explained.

Cuil has to be ready to wage a long and hard battle, much the way Toyota has over the past 50 years with General Motors, Austin noted.

“How many people took on General Motors and won? It’s taken Toyota 50 years, and they are still not No. 1. Anyone taking on Google or Microsoft or any market leader must be prepared for a long fight. And it’s not going to be by directly attacking the strength of the machine, either,” he said.