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Searching for Results

Posted on: Thursday, 8 December 2005, 15:00 CST

By Bruce C. Smith, The Indianapolis Star

Dec. 8--Phone Pro, a Northside Indianapolis company that sells classes in telephone skills and etiquette, wanted to stay a step ahead of its competitors.

So it paid tens of thousands of dollars a year to Google and other Internet search engines to get its company name listed in "pay-per-click" advertising on the top of search engine results.

But Phone Pro, with limited resources and just a half-dozen employees, had to pay a fee to Google every time someone clicked on its site. Phone Pro Manager Lisa Raven said the system wasn't cost-effective. Plenty of people and businesses were browsing, but not a lot were buying.

So the firm turned to Erin Sparks, president of Site Strategics, based in Zionsville. He suggested something called search engine optimization, or SEO, to help the company stand out.

He redesigned Phone Pro's Web site to help viewers and customers get through it more easily. And he reworked the content to get in key words and phrases that would look good to search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves and many others.

In the two weeks since the changes were effective, Phone Pro's Web site was catapulted above many others in several search engines, and a prized first-page listing. The number of hits to the company's Web site has nearly doubled to about 900 a day.

The result: "We're getting more warm prospects" rather than cold calls, Raven said.

Search engine optimization is a growing field, representing thousands of consultants to help clients design Web sites more friendly to search engines.

The field has even sprouted a trade association called SEO Pros, based in Ontario, Canada, representing corporate members in 11 countries.

The challenge to stand out is formidable. Google uses about 100 criteria in determining a Web site's ranking. Most details about the criteria are secret.

A Google spokesman declined to comment, other than to refer questions to the company's Web site, which carries this notice: "Due to the nature of our business and our interest in protecting the integrity of our search results, we limit the amount of information we make available to the public about our ranking system."

How does search engine optimization work? Sparks said that the first page of the results of a search usually contains a few sponsored links to information, while the rest are "organic results," meaning they are the result of Google's hunt.

Since a common word or phrase could return thousands or millions of results in a fraction of a second on Google -- including competitors offering the same products and services -- being on top counts.

"You don't want to be lost in the driftwood on page 1,000," he said.

But Web designers say to include key words about the business and industry that would help a searcher.

Sparks also suggested ways to hook people into the site and make it easy for them to become buyers of the company's services.

Ted Low is hoping SEO works for his new modular building systems company based in Noblesville.

Sparks has just finished www.lowbuildings.com that is written and indexed with SEO techniques, and the link was submitted to the search engine operators Tuesday. The success of Low's site may not be known for a few weeks, he said.

"There are a couple of ways to get your Web site seen on the Internet," Low said. "You can pay, but that gets expensive and the costs of pay-per-click can be unpredictable. Or you can try to write it so the search engines will find it."

This is something of a cat-and-mouse game.

SEO consultants try to figure out the latest changes in the criteria used by Google and other engines to evaluate the quality of each source.

"All the search engines keep secret how they measure and weigh" the content in Web sites, Sparks said. "Everybody studies Google to see how they present the results to figure out how to structure their (Internet marketing) campaigns."

The best SEO results are based on writing good copy, eliminating the use of flashing graphics that search engines don't read, providing credible information, sharing links with other credible and related sites, and using key words frequently but not too much, he said.

Google doesn't fall for the old trick of hiding pages of repetitive key words that have no use other than trying to pack in a lot of key words. "In fact, that kind of unethical action can get you black-listed by Google," Sparks said.

SEEKING A HIT

--The Goal: To drive traffic to your Web site through major search engines and directories.

--The Process: Computer experts apply a process called search engine optimization, which uses in-depth searching techniques to make Web sites rank high to search engines, such as Google.

--The Challenge: Google says it uses more than 100 criteria in ranking search results. Those criteria are a secret.

--Getting Results: The best results are based on writing good copy, eliminating the use of flashing graphics that search engines don't read, providing credible information, sharing links with other credible and related sites, and using key words frequently but not too much.

Sources: Site Strategies, Star research

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Source: The Indianapolis Star

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