Stephane Malhomme

By Author: Stephane Malhomme
Total Articles: 47
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TORONTO -- Appearing prominently on a search engine can transform your Web site from a static document to a lead-generating machine. Search engine management, or SEM, is heralding a new era for small businesses in Canada to turn their Internet presence into resounding orders.

Two years ago, Jason Duck, co-owner of Skypole, a window-cleaning company in Toronto, put up a Web site. It went well with his business cards, and the plaque on the wall outside his office.

But there was something missing: orders. Not one came from the site in more than a year.

The Web site established credibility. It was appealing, had pictures and videos, but didn't generate any business. When we keyed in Å’toronto window cleaning' we wouldn't appear at all, not a blip, he says. The problem was, the site needed more impressions.

An impression happens every time your Web site details are viewed on a search engine results page. To help Skypole create impressions, Mr. Duck hired Justin Cook, owner of Convurgency, an online marketing consultancy, with the mandate to optimize Skypole's Web site for search engines, a process known ...
... as search engine optimization.

Mr. Cook says entrepreneurs should not expect immediate results. Small business owners come to me, want a quick straight quote for a job, which is difficult. We need to look at their business, what keywords work best for them, what competition is out there on those keywords, he says, adding small businesses usually come to him after they have invested in a Web site, and not seen any return. The last thing they want to hear is they may have to reinvest in redesigning it.

Migrating from the 20th page to the frontline can be slow. Mr. Duck's business took about six months to appear at first rank on MSN's and Yahoo's first pages, and third rank on Google's first page. Getting from the 20th result page to the 10th can be done quickly and cheaply. It is only by the end of the process, to the first pages, that expenses will rise and with them, returns. Mr. Cook estimates that you probably get ten times as many impressions on the first page compared to the second.
And once you're there, little else matters. When it comes to turning those impressions into clicks, appearing at the very top of the page may not always secure more clicks than say, the third position on that first page, Mr. Cook says.

Mr. Duck estimates Skypole closes one deal a day through the Web site. The investment required to get there was marginal compared to the sales it generated, he says. I was skeptical at first, considering the incredible amount of established competitors in Toronto. But I think I broke even on the investment in just two orders.

Mr. Cook explains why the process takes time. We tag every segment of clients' pages with the keywords they want to be found under: titles, services, but also we include text files that contain those keywords, we rename pictures so that they also bear those keywords. We find all sorts of ways to multiply relevant keyword hits on each page of their Web site, to drive it to the front of search engine results, he says. For example, if you type SEO Toronto on Google, Convurgency pops up first rank, first page.

Next is turning those impressions into clicks. There is consumer psychology involved, beyond the numbers. On Google, for example, you can get on top of the page for paying hits when you buy ad words. Out of 1,000 impressions you may get 10 clicks. You also have organic impressions that come through search engine optimization, those are free and you may get 20 clicks out of 1,000 impressions there. But if you do both at the same time, you may get 70 clicks out of 1,000 hits, because customers are reassured to see your company name in both columns.

Tamara Micner from Google's analytics team agrees: Businesses should think holistically about both search and ads, which we see as complementary. For an online promotion, for instance, a business could bid on related keywords and optimize its Web site content to highlight that promotion, and so reach customers through both organic search results and corresponding ads, she says.

The nature of your product and the buying patterns of your customers also influence your strategy. If your product is a big one-off sale, you can get a fair return by purchasing hot keywords (currently Å’loan reconsolidate' fetches between $40 and $50 a click, for example).
Conversely, if you want to derive revenue only from advertisers on your site, you need to attract recurring traffic cheaply. Mr. Cook says, in this case, your best bet is to make a big footprint in the blogosphere. Your site will be forwarded around, linked to, discussed about in forums, and it will generate the free traffic you need to be indexed and appear prominently.

Ms. Micner advises small businesses to focus on three aspects to make their sites search-engine friendly: have original content to attract visitors and entice Web masters to link to your site; ensure the site is fully accessible across a variety of platforms and browsers; and highlight the location of the business so that it surfaces on geographically specific queries.

http://www.financialpost.com/small_business/story.html?id=455852