small
business
ouOtutooff msitein, d
Web surfers. More than 75 percent of the online community in North America uses search engines, con-
ducting almost 4 billion searches per month. Washington–based company that studies effective
In short, search engines drive traffic to Web sites. ways to use digital marketing.
You’ve got a Web site—make
sure people can find it
By Paul Lima
Links are
important,
but . . .
GO TO GOOGLE and type in “postcard printing.” A
link to GFX Printing in Mississauga appears as one
of Google’s top 10 links, often listed in the top three.
Type in “Kilkenny Castle stock photography” and a
link to World of Stock in Vancouver appears as one
of Google’s top 10 links, often listed in the top three.
How is it that these small, relatively obcure
Canadian businesses rank high in search engine
results? It’s because their Web sites have been optimized for that very purpose.
Search engines are the starting point for most
PHOTODISC
Unfortunately, many business owners do not know
how to list their Web sites in search engine databases. Keywords are the key
Nor do they know how to optimize Web sites to Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about
ensure their sites rank high based on search terms relevant content and link popularity, says Barbara
related to the products or services they offer. Coll, founder ofWebMama.com Inc. (www.web
“Companies and consumers are out there,
mama.com), headquartered in Palo Alto, California.
searching the Web,” says Costco member Barb Sybal, “The more times your site uses keywords and
who owns GFX (
www.gfxinc.com), which specializes phrases, and the more links there are to your site,
in custom color card products, including direct-mail especially from sites that use similar keywords, the
postcards, bookmarks and CD covers. All of the higher your ranking.”
company’s business is generated online, so a well- For instance, Steve Smith, Costco member and
optimized site is crucial to Sybal.pr incipal partner of World of Stock (www.worldof
Her work has paid off—repeatedly. Most of her
stock.com), set up an affiliate program. Affiliates cre-
customersfindheronline.And GFXrecentlylanded ate their own stock photography Web sites and
a large promotional postcard printing job for St. promote the more than 41,000 digital images on
Andrews golf club in Scotland. The Australian adver- World of Stock. Because his affiliates sell the same
tising agency that handled the campaign found GFX product, they use similar keywords. And because
online—by conducting a Google search. they have to close the sale on World of Stock, they
create links to the World of Stock Web site.
Be submissive Smith says he pays affiliates a percentage of each
To show up in search engine results, a Web site sale they generate, and affiliates create dozens of
must be submitted to the search engine or indexed links to the World of Stock Web site. The links gen-by search engine robots (’bots) that roam the Web erate traffic and sales and boost World of Stock’s
looking for sites to add to search engine databases. search engine rank, which generates additional traf-To rank high in search engine results, the site must fic and sales. That’s the kind of vicious circle any
be optimized for relevant search terms. And when it business would like.
comes to search engines, rank matters.
The first site listed in search engine results Image isn’t everything
receives three times more hits than the fifth site; the Sites that are heavily dependent on images are
first 10 sites (generally the first page of results) are not suited for search engine optimization, since
visited 78 percent more often than sites listed 11th search engines can’t translate pictures to words.
to 30th, according to Atlas Solutions, a Seattle, However, there is a way around this. To feed key-
. . . submitting a site does
not guarantee a listing.
The best way to be listed or
indexed is to have multiple
links to your site.
Google and other search
engines see links to a site as
a validation of a site. The
greater the validation, the
higher a site shows up in
search engine results, as
long as it is well optimized
for keyword searches that
search engine visitors use.
That is why it is important
to beg, borrow or barter
links from sites that are thematically related to your site.
Some companies try to
boost their search engine
rank by using link farms, a
so-called “black-hat,” or
illegitimate, SEO technique.
To create a link farm, a company sets up numerous Web
sites that link back to a
main site. The content on all
of the sites is similar to that
on the main site.
On the surface, this
might seem like a brilliant
SEO strategy, and some SEO
companies use link farms
and other black-hat forms
of optimization to boost the
search engine rank of their
clients’ Web sites. However,
if identified as an illegitimately optimized site, the
site can be delisted from
the search engine database.
So when selecting an
SEO company to help with
optimization, conduct due
diligence—check references,
speak to previous clients and
conduct a Web search based
on the company’s name. C
