This article, containing and interview with our MD Michael Heraghty, was published in the Sunday Times on May 8, 2005.

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’.”