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Minnesota Technology Magazine - Spring 2004

Hide and Seek                                                                  

Want to generate more business by landing a top spot on a search engine’s search results? You need to know what Google and other engines are looking for and how they look for it.

The Web search has become the second most-used application of the Internet, ranked only behind e-mail. There are more than 150 million people online in the United States alone, and 76 percent of them use search engines on a regular basis. Businesses would be foolish not to want access to all these inquiring eyes. That’s why search engine optimization—the practice of improving a Web site’s standing on the most popular search engines—is a crucial element of many marketing plans these days.

There are ways to pay for search engine placement, but first, and perhaps foremost, a company should strive to get its Web site in “natural” or “organic” search results. These are the primary hits returned in any basic online search. Generally, it costs nothing to be included in organic results, and studies show that search engine users click them much more often than sponsored links. But many searches generate links that number in the hundreds, thousands, or even millions, spanning dozens of pages. If your site isn’t among the ?rst few displayed, its chances of being seen are slim. More than half the clicks made from a typical online search are on the top two hits that pop up.

“If you are not on the ?rst page [of a search engine’s results], you might as well hang it up,” says Zinda Schaefer, search marketing manager with Ciceron, a Minneapolis Internet marketing agency. “People are busy today, and that’s why they love the Internet. They can ?nd what they want quickly. They are not going to go three and four pages deep to ?nd something they can ?nd on the ?rst page.” Landing one of those coveted top spots requires an understanding of what search engines are looking for and how they look for it.

KEY INGREDIENTS

The criteria that Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines use to determine their results are highly complex. “It’s some of the most advanced computing in the world right now,” says Craig Berdie, an MTI Internet business consultant. “[Search engines] are looking at 4 billion Web pages and trying to ?gure out what they are and give a response in less than half a second.”

Engines use programs called “spiders” to explore the Web and catalog the content they ?nd. A Web site’s basic architecture plays a big role in how it is evaluated. Spiders look at page names and onscreen text. Words that appear frequently or near the top of a page receive special attention, as do terms set apart as section headings, or in boldface. It’s important that a business identify its “keywords”— terms or phrases closely associated with the company’s work—and emphasize them on Web pages in the ways that search engines are known to notice. Doing so helps ensure that when people type those keywords into an online query, the company’s Web site will show up as a solid match.

Picking effective keywords can be trickier than you might think, however. Going with your gut and selecting terms you normally use to describe your products or services isn’t always the best solution. Berdie recalls working with a window manufacturer that assumed “sliders” and“double-hungs”—common product categories within the window industry—would make good keywords on its Web site. Research, however, indicated otherwise. “People who use the word ‘slider’ are not looking for windows,” Berdie explains. “And ‘double- hungs?’ You don’t even want to go there. But you do ?nd that people look for ‘sliding patio door’ and ‘double- hung window’ and ‘casement window.’”

Online resources such as the Web site Wordtracker.com reveal this kind of critical information. Firms use these tools to find out what terms have been frequently searched for in the past. This may help a companydiscover extra keywords it hasn’t previously considered. It may be wise to use popular generic terms for your products in addition to their trademarked names. 3M, for example, might make sure a page devoted to Post-it Notes also refers to “sticky pads.”

“If you are not thinking about what users consider to be your product or what they colloquially refer to your product as, then you are going to miss the boat on optimizing search engines,” warns Matt Valek, a senior consultant with Systems Consulting Group, a marketing- focused IT ?rm in Minneapolis.

On the other hand, cramming too many keywords on a page can be counterproductive. Search engines assign signi?cance to terms based on the frequency of their appearance. When adding keywords increases the amount of surrounding onscreen text, “you actually hurt yourself,” explains John Kalka, a senior analyst at Maplewood-based 3M, “because you destroy the density of the match.”

In some cases, a ?rm might aim for fewer matches. Berdie once worked with a company that manufactures injection-molded window hardware. Research indicated that using “plastic injection molding” as a keyword phrase would have put the ?rm’s Web site in the results of about 3,500 searches a month, but the people conducting those searches would have been looking for a wide array of products. Ultimately, the company decided that “tilt handles” was a better phrase to emphasize. “There are only 70 or 80 people a month who have searched on that term,” Berdie says, “but the likelihood of them being people who would buy the [company’s] products is much higher.”

Occasionally, you have to ignore what people are looking for. For instance, 3M makes a coating that helps prevent glass from shattering. People looking for such a product might type “explosion-proof glass” into their search engines, but 3M can’t use the phrase as a keyword because it could constitute an inaccurate claim. “If our page says ‘explosion-proof glass,’” says Kalka, “are we going to be legallyresponsible because it’s actually explosion-resistant glass? We have to be real careful in that respect.”

Legal concerns warrant another important aspect of keyword management: keeping an eye out for unauthorized uses of your trademarks. That’s another area in which you can use tools such as Wordtracker to identify Web sites that contain these terms. You don’t want competitors drawing traffic with keywords that rightfully belong to you.

Finally, companies shouldn’t forget their keywords when it’s time to tout accomplishments to the media. TopRank Online Marketing, a Mound-based Web services ?rm, incorporates strategic keyword placement in its clients’ press releases. These are submitted to the news pages of sites like Google and Yahoo, which draw plenty of visitors looking for topics of interest. “If they search using one of the target phrases that we’ve identi?ed with our client, then our client’s press release is going tocome up as one of the first few [matches],” says TopRank founder Lee Odden. One of TopRank’s clients, National Noti?cation Network, a Glendale, Calif., emergency communication systems provider, tried the technique earlier this year. “In the month of February, they had over 240,000 page views just off of four or ?ve optimized press releases,” Odden reports.

HITTING THE LINKS

Search engines also place a lot of stock in a Web page’s popularity. Google pioneered the concept of “link relevancy,” now embraced throughout the industry, to give preferential treatment to sites that have already secured the approval and trust of others online. If a lot of Web sites offer links to one particular page, search engines rank that page highly in their responses to related queries. “The idea behind link popularity is that the public has already voted for what’s important by linking to it,” says Kalka. This bodes well for well-known ?rms such as 3M, which often rises to the top of search results lists. By typing “link:www.3m.com” into Google (this function works for any Web address), Kalka quickly sees that nearly 12,000 sites are known to have links to his company’s home page. “Because we have so many sites that link to us,” he says, “we usually have aleg up on search optimization.”

Not all links are considered equal, however. Search engines lend greater credence to links from highly surfed sites. “Getting a link from, say, CNN is much more valuable than getting a link from a Bob’s Bait & Tackle,” Berdie notes.

In a similar vein, the more links that a page includes, the less signi?cant each one is in the eyes of a search engine. “If you are the only link on CNN.com, that’s really good,” Berdie says. “If you are on a giant list of 750 plastic injection molders in the Upper Midwest, you just get 1/750th of whatever the weight of that page is.”

For this reason, it’s wise to steer clear of “link farms,” sites that charge fees for inclusion and place loads of unrelated links on their pages. Search engines frown upon this practice and in some cases, penalize participants by lowering their ranks.

To garner more bene?cial links, consider recruiting efforts instead. Ciceron undertakes this process for clients, pursuing logical endorsements and reputable sites with a history of linking to likeminded organizations. For example, notes Ciceron CEO Andrew Eklund,“I’ll look at all of the Web sites that are linking to [my client’s] competitors, and say, ‘Well, they should be linking to you too.’”

FRESHEN UP

Search engines also favor sites with uptodate information. Spiders assign high priority to pages that have changed since they were last encountered. “Just changing a couple of periods and a couple of sentences here and there probably isn’t going to help somebody reach their objective,” Odden says. But regular, substantial site revisions can keep pages on top of search result lists. If a ?rm doesn’t routinely introduce new products or services, it might create a quarterly online client newsletter. One increasingly common way to refresh a Web site is the Weblog, or “blog.” This mechanism makes it easy to quickly add new, informal jottings usually in the style of a journal entry—on a daily basis.

REAL RESULTS

It’s not necessary to get hung up on high hit totals or top results rankings when devising search engine optimization strategies. Companies are better off identifying more practical, businessoriented benchmarks. “What clients are usually saying when they want more search engine traffic is, ‘We’re not getting enough leads or sales off of our Web site,’” Eklund says. Unlikemost marketing techniques, search optimization efforts can be meticulously measured. Ciceron employs tools that track exactly when a client’s Web site showed up in a search, what keywords got it there, how many searchers opted to visit the site, and how many of those people ultimately clicked the “buy” button or sent an e-mail inquiry. “We can tell our clients, ‘This particular keyword phrase at Google is generating $6,000 amonth for you in actual sales,’” Eklund says. “It’s taking a lot of the guesswork out of advertising and marketing.”

While firms such as Ciceron and TopRank are happy to enhance existing Web sites, they say the best route to successful search engine performance is building a site from scratch, with optimization strategies in mind right from the get-go. IT professionals belong at the table with business managers and marketing communications staff when it’s time to hammer out how a Web site will look like and what it will say. “The best time to truly optimize a site is when content categories are being de?ned, site architecture is being planned, and the site map is being developed,” Odden stresses. “Then we can take full advantage of making sure that site is search engine-friendly.”

—Scott Briggs is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer

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