Specialist firms are at hand to push your website to the top of the search engine pile - and keep it there, writes Miriam Hils-CosgroveThe saying goes: "If you build it, they will come". Things might be that simple if you are constructing a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, but if you are launching a web-site into the noise and congestion of cyberspace, attracting visitors is a far more complex undertaking.
With more than 80 per cent of bricks and mortar companies expected to have added their websites to the already substantial numbers of pure-play dot-coms by the end of this year, the world wide web is becoming increasingly jammed with e-commerce sites peddling everything from accordions to zithers.
In the face of intense competition for the attentions of a limited number of online customers, how can aspiring e-entrepreneurs keep their websites from sinking into cyber-oblivion?
At the height of the dotcom hysteria, internet companies threw large sums of cash at traditional forms of advertising such as television and newspaper ads, often with little effect. Even online banner ads on web pages failed to bring the expected returns.
Now, with venture capital running dry, e-businesses are having to find more cost-effective ways of attracting custorners.
According to the market research firm Forrester, 8.1 per cent of UK internet users turn to search engines like Alta Vista and Google or directories such as Yahoo? and MSN.com to help them find what they are looking for on the internet.
These search services provide users with listings of web addresses of interest to them, usually at little or no cost to the website.
But while these services can help bring traffic to a site, few users have the patience to scroll beyond the first two or three pares of search results.
"Everyone is vying for the same top ten positions," says Jim McFarlane, co-founder of Livingston-based firm PetPlanet.co.uk, which sells pet care products online.
"In a very large marketplace like ours, its difficult to achieve a high ranking on the search engines.
Increasingly, however, internet entrepreneurs like McFarlane are recognising the need to adopt strategies aimed at attaining higher positions on directories and search engines.
lain Harper, managing director of Stirling-based web consultancy Scotti Internet Marketing, says: "Initially in the industry, there was a lack of emphasis on search engine positioning.
"Websites spent a lot of money on on- and off-line advertising, but surprisingly few were concerned with where they stood in the search engines."
But now, says Harper: "Companies are realising that the cost of customer acquisition through search engine optimisation is far lower than the cost of advertising."
Heather Luscombe, cofounder of Edinburgh-based search engine optimisation firm Bigmouthmedia, agrees with this view.
"Some of our customers had been very disappointed with their off-line marketing because it really hadn't driven many people to their website," she says.
Scotti and Bigmouthmedia are only two examples of a growing number of companies to offer search engine optimisation services - also known as web positioning - to online clients.
The UK web positioning market, now the second largest in Europe after Germany, is expected to be worth £60 million this year.
Firms such as Webposition, NetBooster, Webgravity and Semantic Fishing are all offering to help websites move their way up the search engine listings.
These companies typically charge clients for an analysis of their websites, followed by the creation and implementation of a strategy aimed at improving search results, and a monthly maintenance fee thereafter. Prices vary according to the number of search services targeted.
"Our cost per click is really low - by the end of six months it's usually about 3p," says Luscombe. "And those are targeted users, people who have searched for the keyword. It's very, very cost effective."
Individual webmasters can, of course, submit their sites to the search engines themselves.
But they are often unaware of hidden problems in their websites that can prevent them from getting the listing position they want.
"Search engine positioning is in no way rocket science," Harper admits.
"But it is a specialist task - you've got to assimilate a huge amount of information to do it properly."
One of the main jobs of these firms is to help clients in their selection of key search terms and meta-tags (HTML key words and sentences) that alert the search engine to the content of the site.
Bigmouthmedia client Golfbidder.co.uk's primary key words are, for example, "used golf clubs", while Clickmusic.co.uk seeks to achieve the highest possible listing under "music".
Yet identifying the right key words and meta-tags is not as simple as it sounds.
By tracking the activities of search engines on test sites, Luscombe says, Bigmouthmedia has been able to work out how each of the search engines prefers the words - in what order, number of characters, number of spaces etc. We have a very tight recipe for how meta-tags are created.
In some cases, web positioning consultances also have to advise clients of design flaws that are prevent search engines from reading their sites. Ironically,websites which feature state of the art design elements such as Flash animation or frames can be the hardest for search engines to detect because they are unable to read text contained in graphics.
To get around these problems, web positioning specialists often set up a "doorway" or "gateway" page.
Designed to stand in for the less compatible first page of a website, the page typically contains text laiden with key words designed to be attractive to a search engine. Optimisation experts may also advise their clients to build links to other websites into their design, as many search engines favour well connected sites.
And cosultants often encourage websites with larger budgets to pay for higher spots on search engines which offer that option.
Finally, consultants take over the laborious task of submitting their website to search engines and directories.
This can prove tricky, says Luscombe, because "each search engine has different rules about how often you can submit",
"These aren't published, and we have only worked them out through our own research."
A website that is not submitted often enough can fall out of certain search engines, Luscombe says, but at the same time, other engines won't accept sites that are submitted too often for fear of cluttering up their indexes.
While not all web businesses can afford bespoke search optimisation services, US web positionaing expert Fredrick Marckini of iProspect.com advises newcomers to the internet to take search engine positioning into account when designing their sites.
"Intentionally launching a website that could not be found on any of the major search engines would be alot like opening a mail-order business and not publishing your phone number," he says.
"No matter ho pretty and interactive your new website is, if it can't be found in one or more of the major search engines, you're the proud owner of a billboard in the woods.
mhilscosgrove@scotsman. com
This article first appeared in The Scotsman (www.scotsman.com)
