While paid search listings and pay-per-click advertising have become more popular, organic search listings still outperform their paid counterparts in terms of generating clicks, writes Ciara O’Brien.

By their very nature, most businesses prefer to be leading the pack, and when it comes to being found online, there’s no exception to the rule. With search engines still accounting for a large proportion of internet traffic, appearing at the top of the search results is a goal for which most businesses are striving.

According to Jupiter Research, 82 per cent of internet traffic arrives at a website via a search engine, with both paid search and organic listings used.

The remaining 18 per cent is made up of clicks on an e-mail link, website ads, direct URL address entry and website links. “The search engine should be the focal point of any net marketing,” said John Coburn, Praxis Now.

Deciding which search engines to target is also an important decision. There are about three or four main ones out there and, of these, Google is undoubtedly the most popular. Getting on to the front page of Google is akin to the Holy Grail. While paid search listings and pay-per-click advertising has certainly become more popular in recent times, organic search listings still outperform their paid counterparts in terms of generating clicks.

Unfortunately, it’s not always a simple process to work out exactly what works and what is simply wasted time in improving your organic search listings. The exact formula used to work out where your website appears in the listings is a closely guarded secret.

“Search engine optimisation is roughly 70 per cent science and 30 per cent second guessing,” said Coburn. “Google and the other search engines do not declare their placement algorithms. If they did, they would be abused by search index spammers.”

As a result, firms should choose their SEO partners carefully. “No one can promise you first page placement,” said Patrick Bates, managing director of Webtrade. “There is no absolute guarantee, but there are an awful lot of good practices that can improve your ranking.”

Page level optimisation

Content is still the number one factor in determining your site’s search engine ranking. How content is laid out will impact on your search engine ranking, along with how visible it is, where certain keywords are placed – if at all – and the different tags that you use throughout the webpage.

Many firms optimise their homepage, but seem to forget about the other pages that their site is made up of. “Google indexes pages rather than sites,” said Michael Heraghty of Heraghty.net. This means that visitors can come to your site through any page, and as such, these should all be designed with both Google and the user in mind.

“I think the key thing is to understand the language of your customers,” said Laurence Veale, senior analyst at IQ Content. “Mine information from your website log files to see what phrases people are using to find you, rather than internal jargon. This will go a long way to improving your search engine rankings.”

Firms may also have to rethink how they are writing their content, Bates said, as what works offline may not necessarily set the online world alight. This could be anything from including the geographic location in the homepage just to drive home the point that the firm is operating in Ireland, something that would probably not be a consideration in a print brochure.

“The key thing is relevancy that is consistent through the site,” said Bates. The use of certain key phrases in text, page titles, HTML links and other areas of the site will all help boost your Google search engine standing.

Search engines are already offering webmasters tools to help them achieve a higher page ranking. These include Google Webmaster Tools, which is free and allows you to see how your site is performing and make it more Google-friendly. Google Analytics, meanwhile, will help site managers learn more about where their visitors come from and how they interact with the site.

KISS – keep it simple, stupid – is one piece of advice that web designers would do well to heed. “Complex GUIs (graphical user interface) hinder the crawler’s ability to access the site and index the pages,” said Martin Murray, chief executive of Interactive Return.

Websites that are graphic-heavy may look pretty, but unfortunately, web crawlers for the search engines can’t actually read images – only text. So all those pretty logos and toolbars may come to nothing if your site can’t be found because of them.

Also prone to causing problems for automated crawling programs are languages such as JavaScript. Because the bots cannot ‘see’ what the JavaScript generates, it tends to ignore it altogether – not a good result if all your navigation is contained in this code.

“If you can’t cut and paste the site content into a word document, chances are a search engine can’t read it,” said Heraghty.

There are ways round this, however. You can utilise the ‘alt’ tags to place text that the web crawlers can read in the navigations bars. You can also use a number of html links throughout the site’s content to get as many cross-links between site pages as possible.

Removing code bloat is another tactic that could help. Once again, the simpler the site is for the web crawler to read, the better, and unnecessary code is one thing that could delay the process. Even something as simple as using external CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can help your site climb up the rankings.

You can also cut down on the volume of code the search engine spiders need to wade through by putting all JavaScript code in external include files.

“By removing actual code from the source code of your pages you will again cut down on code bloat and make your pages easier to navigate for the search engines,” said Murray.

Keywords

Once considered the only way to get on search engine listings, abuse by keywords spammers means that keywords, while still impacting on search index placing, are no longer as important as they once were. Google never relied solely on keywords to gauge a website’s value, as it was so open to abuse.

Avoid cramming as many keywords into your metadata as possible if they have no relevance to your site’s content. This is where a lot of firms make a mistake.

“Aim for approximately 200-300 words of relevant content per page,” said Murray. Equally important, he said, is that within the text are keyword-rich terms. These should be placed in the page header, ie the blue title bar that tops off the page; as text links and alt text; and within the navigation in order for the Google crawlers to recognise the phrases.

Links

“Your links score is a function of a number of things,” said Coburn. “It used to be heavily weighted to the volume of inbound links. Now there is substantial emphasis placed on the quality of the inbound links.”

Getting trusted inbound links to your website from a quality source will push your search engine ranking up the page. “Each link is a vote for your website,” said Heraghty.

It’s less skilful than optimising your page’s content for search engines while still retaining the interest of your customers, but getting these links is much more difficult than you would think. After all, it would be quite hard to convince your competitors to place a link to your website on their own.

Relevance is the most important consideration when it comes to those links. For example, if you get other sites to link to yours who are in an industry that has no connection to yours, chances are that the tactic will just confuse Google’s automated page ranking programs even more.

However, if for example you work in health and safety and get a top Google ranked website such as the Health and Safety Authority to carry a link to your website on its page, this will be assessed as better quality than a link to a local web design firm.

Some firms persuade relevant sites to carry links by promising to place one on their site in return. “It’s better to have an incoming link from a site you don’t reciprocate,” said Heraghty.

“But a reciprocal link is better than no link at all.” Link farms, sites that link to hundreds of random websites with no seeming connection or relevance, are a definite no-no and can actually end up negatively impacting your search engine score. Coburn pointed out that these may even end up diluting your relevancy score, which will undo any other good word you had already put in.

Link farms are considered a “black hat” technique. “Black hat search engine marketing techniques will work, but only in the short term – if your site isn’t banned first – so my advice is focus your energies on creating a content-rich site with a clear hierarchy and an abundance of text links,” said Murray.

There are certain things that websites should avoid at all costs, such as hidden text, multiple URLs and domains with duplicate content and deceptive redirects.

These will be considered spam by the search engines and could result in your site being bumped back down the listings for employing underhand tactics.

“The key thing I would avoid is keyword loading and cloaking,” said Veale.

“This is where the site hides the keywords somehow. It’s not for the customer, it’s for the search engine. If the search engine figures out you are doing it, they will blacklist you and you will be taken from the listings.”

It’s not an idle threat – blacklisting certainly happens. The most high-profile case was that of car manufacturer BMW, which found itself booted off Google’s search index last year for using ‘doorway pages’ to boost search rankings.

These ‘doorways’ display one page to Google’s search bots and another to users, and target numerous keywords.

What firms have to keep in mind too is that building up an organic search listing is a lengthy process, and taking shortcuts is probably ill advised.

“Trying to get your page found organically can take time,” said Bates. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and, it appears, neither was Google’s search index. If you are seeking instant gratification and visibility, the organic listings are not the place to find it.

Of course, it has its advantages. “Organic search engine optimisation is a more popular way to attract visitors to websites than other online programs such as pay-per-click, online advertising, e-mail marketing, sponsorships, etc, due to the opportunity to gain longer search engine visibility thus providing a greater return on investment,” said Murray.

And it seems that users are more likely to pay attention to organic results than their paid-for counterparts.

“Web users are six times more likely to click on organic search listings than paid listings,” said Bates.

“They are more likely to trust the organic results.” However, pay-per-click also has its uses. For example, if the key phrases you want your website to be found under are highly popular, you may have little or no chance of getting on the first page of results any time soon. One way around this is to pay for the listing on Google, through Google AdWords.

Buying space on Google is also pretty immediate. The downside to that is that, should you decide to ditch the paid-for campaign, your premium listing space will also disappear, and you may be back where you started on the search rankings – invisible.

Your website may look great, but if it’s not one of the first listed online, it won’t bring in business, writes Sandra O’Connell.

WHEN Galway-based Kevin Kelly established his business as a personal development speaker, one of the first things he did was establish a website. As far as generating business went, he needn’t have bothered.

“My initial website was very pretty, but absolutely useless in terms of generating business. Nobody visited it, full stop,” said Kelly.

The problem, as with many websites, is that it operated below the search-engine radar.

Frustrated, he engaged a specialist in search-engine optimisation to overhaul his online presence with a view to getting further up Google’s listings.

Today his site sits in the top four in any search for “personal development speaker” on Google.com, leading to a steady stream of speaking engagements for Kelly around the world.

“Most of my business still comes from word-of-mouth referrals, but I have increased the leads generated by my website more than 10-fold as a result of being at the top of the listings,” he said.

As Kelly discovered, having a website is only the first battle when it comes to online marketing. To win the war, you have to attract visitors.

In excess of 90% of all referrals to e-commerce websites now come from the four main search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

Yet only 10% of web users look beyond the second page of results, so if your business isn’t in the top 20 results, no matter how pretty the web page, it’s practically invisible.

There are two types of search engines — directories and web crawlers. Directories, such as Yahoo, have staff paid to consider every new website submitted before slotting them into categories or subsections.

Web crawlers such as Google or Ask.com work by sending out software programs — called bots — that trawl the web for information relevant to a user’s key word search.

“Very many people think having a website is enough,” said Martin Murray, chief executive of Interactive Return, an internet marketing specialist. “It’s not. You need to have a search-engine-friendly website.”

Certain rules of thumb apply. Search engines read the contents of websites and judge how relevant they are for a certain search. “If you sell widgets, for example, you are going to need plenty of content with the word ‘widgets’ in it,” said Murray.

“Link popularity is also important. If there are lots of links to your site, the search engine will see your site as an authority, and that will push you up the rankings. The key is to submit your site to as many online directories as you can.”

One option here is to find out what your competitors’ links are. This is done by keying their web address in to the Google search box, preceded by the command “link:”.

There are other tricks of the trade. “Having online news- letters or ezines with lots of links to your own website, a blog with links back to your site or online PR will also push you up the ratings,” said Murray.

Blogs are very “search-engine friendly” because they are rich in key words, and contain a large amount of text.

For Ivan Lynch, director of the Ennis-based bespoke tourism firm Authentic Ireland, a €10,000 investment in search-engine optimisation saw his company jump from page four in the American Google rankings to a current ranking in the top 10 for “Ireland tours, travel and vacation” — and rising.

This has translated into a 25% boost in bookings. “Our business is dependent on the website for attracting customers,” said Lynch. “Even though we have in-house web designers, there were things we were doing that were wrong and we didn’t even know.”

Search-engine optimisation — or search-engine marketing, as it is also called — may seem like a dark art to the uninitiated, but you can do quite a lot of it yourself.

To maximise traffic you also can opt to pay for advertisements on search engines, typically paying a fee each time somebody clicks through to your site from a search engine page. A far cheaper way of generating web traffic is to include your web address on all your business stationery.

More than 20% of web visits come from web referrals, which means making sure your web address is on e-mail footers, too.

“At the very least you should be able to find your own company by Googling it,” said Michael Heraghty, Dublin-based author of Website Findability: How to Get Traffic from Google and Other Search Engines.

“You’d be surprised how many websites don’t feature, simply because of the way they were designed. Equally, the principals in any company should be easily found by Googling too — because prospective clients very often run searches on individuals — yet here again they very often aren’t.”

Among the most common problems is the overuse of graphics. “Images should be used sparingly and should not contain text,” said Heraghty.

“One way to check if your site is search-engine friendly is to click and drag your mouse across the screen. Text that can’t be highlighted can’t be seen by search engines.”

An “organic” search-engine optimisation campaign concentrates on building search- engine awareness through use of key words, content and links. Typically, it can take between six and nine months to get to the top of the listings.

In the meantime, one of the quickest ways to appear on the first page is to buy your way in through sponsored links and web advertisements such as Google AdWords.

One person who has cracked organic search-engine optimisation is the Cork-based marketing consultant Simon O’Keefe. Searchers keying in “marketing consultants Ireland” to Google.com will find his company, Aspire, at the top of the listings.

Being number one isn’t necessarily a magic wand, he says. “People might Google a product and buy it, but they don’t tend to buy professional services in that way,” said O’Keefe. “However, they use it to narrow down the field, so it certainly doesn’t do us any harm. There is also a prestige element to being at the top of the listings.”

SIMPLE STEPS TO GET AHEAD ONLINE

FIRST, make sure you have registered with all the big search engines. Their sites will have a facility enabling you to do this, usually for free.

Search engines look for web links to your site, so establishing reciprocal links with complementary businesses or with forums and directories will push your site higher up the results page.

Text should be rewritten to make it more appealing to search engines.

Use as many key words, including misspelt versions, as you think a potential customer is likely to put in the search box to find you.

Use these key words as often as possible, bearing in mind most search engines have a facility to filter out mindless repetition.

One-word searches are rare, so ideally use phrases and not single words.

Google offers a free key-word suggestion tool on its site to help you come up with some that might work for your business.

Having multiple pages on your site is important, as engines such as Google don’t find websites, but web pages. Create lots of pages and target a search phrase with each.

In highly competitive sectors, such as travel or financial services, it may be better to opt for slightly less-popular search phrases and establish a niche to bring your site to the top of a search listing.

Where you place your key words on the page is also important. They must appear on the title tags — the names you put on your web pages and which appear at the top of the user’s web browser.

An internet presence won’t raise your profile unless you can lure passing trade, writes Sandra O’Connell.

WHEN Conor Dooley set up Comprend, his Limerick-based business consultancy two years ago, one of the first things he did was get a website.

“I went to a design company that specialised in websites and got one that was strong on graphics and visual content,” he said. But having spent €3,000 on the site, he was disappointed by the lack of traffic it attracted. “Three months after going live, it was still only visited by people who already knew it was there.”

Many small firms have had similar experiences, because having a website is only the first step to online marketing. Attracting users is the key — and to do that, you’ve got to attract a search engine.

There are two types of search engine: directories and web crawlers. Directories, such as Yahoo, pay staff to consider every new website submitted, before slotting them into appropriate categories. Web crawlers, such as Google or Ask Jeeves, work by sending out programs called bots that trawl the web for information relevant to a user’s keyword search.

Getting keyword searchers to click onto your website is the cyber space equivalent of catching passing trade. As such, making it to the top of listings for sites such as Google is the holy grail for commercial firms.

More than 90% of all referrals to e-commerce sites come from the internet’s four largest search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. Competition for a high ranking on these sites is intense because only 10% of web users look beyond the second page of results. If your business isn’t in the top 20, therefore, chances are it will not be seen at all. To generate significant traffic, you really need to be in the top five.

As one of only a handful of specialist business strategists in the country, Dooley expected any user entering the keywords “business”, “strategist” and “Ireland” to be rewarded with his web address. In fact, it wasn’t featuring at all. What he hadn’t realised was that he had to make his site attractive to search engines, a process called “search engine optimisation”.

“No amount of money will get you up the Google listings,” said William Cotter, managing director of Net Affinity, an online marketing company. However, a fair bit of search engine optimisation can be done by website owners.

Typically, the first step is to make sure the site is registered with all the big search engines. Their sites will have a facility enabling you to do this, usually for free.

When search engines sift through millions of web pages instantaneously, looking for content that matches the searcher’s keywords, part of what they are looking for are links that point to your site. So organising reciprocal links with complementary businesses or forums can push your site higher up the results page.

You can also tweak the text to make it more appealing to search engines. This involves making correct use of as many keywords, including misspelled versions, as you think a potential customer is likely put in the search box to find you. Using these key words as often as possible will help, although most search engines have a facility to filter out repetition.

To succeed, you need to think of as many keyword variations as you can. A florist, for example, could use flower-seller, flowers and roses. Where you place your keywords is also important. They must appear on title tags — the names you put on individual web pages, which appear at the top of the user’s web browser.

You can opt to pay for advertisements on search engines, typically paying a fee each time someone clicks through to your site from the engine’s page. The cost per click can depend on how hotly contested your keywords are. The more you pay, the higher your ad will be positioned.

A far cheaper way of generating web traffic is to make sure that you include your web address on all your business stationery. More than 20% of web visits come from web referrals, so include your web address on all e-mail footers too.

Different search engines rank websites according to different measures, some by a site’s popularity, others by its relevance and others by quality. Some will allow the option of paying for a listing on the first page.

“You don’t have to sell people on the value of search engine optimisation any more. All they want to know is how to be No 1 in the listings,” said Michael Heraghty, a search engine consultant. And for most small firms, that means top of Google.

Heraghty, who lectures on the topic for the Irish Internet Association, has a number of tips for firms. “You can get into Google by getting a link from any old site,” he said. “That will get you onto Google easy. Getting up the listings is where it gets difficult.”

To do this, you have to choose your keywords carefully. “You have to identify the keywords you think people will try to use to get to your site. The trick is to use phrases, not words,” he said.

Most searches comprise two, then three or four words. “Nobody keys in one word. Target as many key phrases as you can and don’t just put them all on one page.” Google has a keyword suggestion tool available for free on its site to help you come up with ones that might work for your business.

Having multiple pages on your website is also important. “People often don’t realise that Google doesn’t find websites, it finds web pages. So why fish with one rod? Create lots of pages and target a search phrase with each,” said Heraghty. “In highly competitive sectors such as travel, you might even be better off going for slightly less popular search phrases to bring you to the top of a listing.”

Even internet consultants, however, sometimes have trouble discerning exactly how web crawlers rate sites.

“Google has a method of ranking sites that is secret — the famous Google algorithm — that is like the secret ingredient in Coke. Nobody knows what they are looking for,” said Heraghty.

“Certainly, links to your site are important. It’s not about the quantity of links, however, but quality. That means you shouldn’t just use any old links but ones that are relevant to your business.”

Once you start tweaking your website with a view to moving up the search engine’s listings, monitor your progress to see what is working for you.

Web metrics tools, which will tell you the volume of traffic your site is attracting and where it is coming from, are free from Extreme-dm.com/tracking/ Help is also available at Searchenginewatch.com, Searchenginehelp.com and Searchengineforums.com.

“Small businesses are not realising the potential that can be had from marketing and publicising their site,” said Net Affinity’s Cotter. “Keep your site as simple as possible in terms of design, functionality and technology,” is his advice. “A very simple, intuitive site from the user’s perspective is likely to be more attractive from a search engine’s perspective too.”

Certainly, paying attention to what search engines want has paid dividends for Dooley. Having forked out an additional €600 for help from a search engine expert — found via Google — he set about reorganising his website.

“The number of meaningful hits I’m now getting each month has gone up by about 300%,” said Dooley. He has also achieved his main goal: “I’m now in the top five when it comes to ‘strategy consultants in Ireland’.”