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Winning The Traffic Generating War with Intelligent Optimization

SEO

Need Traffic?

Putting a corporate website on the Internet is nothing like that Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. Just because you build it does not mean that they will come.

You need to drive traffic towards your home page or it is destined to get lost in the fray. As many failed dot-coms have learned, you can spend money advertising until you're blue in the face, investing in splashy banners, TV spots, billboards, costumed characters, whatever -- it still doesn't guarantee traffic.

If you're looking for the most bang for your buck when it comes to marketing your website, you might want to investigate yet another high-tech acronym: SEO, or Search Engine Optimization company. This $10 phrase refers to the process of fine-tuning your website so it shows up in the top 20 results of a search on Yahoo! and other search engines when somebody types in keywords relevant to your site. SEO is a bit of a black art, as it involves keeping up to date with the intricate, ever-evolving policies for dozens of different search engines, constantly tweaking the text on your site, and submitting web page after web page.

In other words, if you're a PPD in Peoria, Ill., you'll want to make sure each of your web pages includes phrases like "Central Illinois," "Peoria PPD," "Promotional T-Shirts," and so on. Then you'll need to research the major search engines, submit pages and fill out descriptions for directories, and wait 60 days before you see how well the optimization worked.

Before dismissing SEO as an unnecessary, labor-intensive skill meant for industries outside promotional wearables, take a look at the numbers. A Georgia Tech survey showed that 86 percent of Internet users use search engines as their primary means of navigating the Information Superhighway. Media Metrix reported that the top 10 search engines saw 150 million unique visitors in January 2000, a number that grows at a steady 10 percent monthly clip.

According to Bruce Clay, a SEO pro based in Moorpark, Calif., a top ranking on the search engines is imperative to building e-commerce.

"The sites that show up on the first page (of search results) get a lot more traffic than the second-page sites," explains Clay. For every 100 hits a first-page site receives, a second-page site gets only about 50 and, if you're not on at least the third page, "you might as well not be ranked."

An example of SEO in action: Zoe P. Midler, a high-tech product marketing consultant based in Longmont, Colo. was commissioned by a client with offices in multiple cities to drive web traffic at the regional level. "They needed the phones to start ringing," she says, so they wanted to use the Web as a lead-generation device. Midler helped re-engineer their website as an umbrella for several regional pages, each with keywords pertaining to its home city. The result: a 30-percent increase in traffic.

However, "A lot of that was really dicey work," Midler recalls. Because of the arcane, ever-changing nature of SEO, she recommends clients don't do it in-house "because the learning curve is so steep."

Bruce Clay says that it requires about 30 hours for him to fine-tune a website for SEO and four hours a month to maintain a high ranking, but he's an expert. If SEO is something you want to pursue in-house, you'll probably need an IT person to dedicate about 10 hours of his month to the cause. If this isn't an option, there are literally hundreds of companies that implement SEO, from consultants like Clay and Midler to local ISPs to national dot-coms.

Some of the dot-coms that do SEO -- such as Web Ignite and lstSearchRanking.com -- offer packages that cost less than $1,000. These sites are also a good starting point for do-it-yourselfers in their archived articles.

In Bruce Clay's eyes, however, if you want to do it right, call an expert and spend the extra money. "I'm not cheap compared to everybody else," he says of his $4,800 annual fee. He is confident, however. "I'm going to win every time," he touts. "It requires an expert. I'm doing brain surgery with a laser scalpel and everybody else is doing brain surgery with a hammer."

Clay is quick to point out that $4,800 a year equates to $13 a day. "If your top ranking doesn't come out to $13 a day, you shouldn't be on the Web," he says.

The average company's web strategy focuses on drumming up new business. "Dedicating a resource to search engine optimization is the first step in generating leads, whether it's in-house or you outsource," says Midler. "It's a big thing to take on, and once you take it on, you have to make a big commitment. The minute you figure something out, it is bound to change."

Eric Peterson is a contributing editor to Wearables Business, who writes frequently in these pages on a variety of industry subjects.

COPYRIGHT 2001 PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group

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