CyberArtisans Newsletter Vol 5, Number 2

Welcome to the February 2006 issue of the CyberArtisans monthly newsletter!

Our goal is to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.

This Month's Topics
Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses
The Next Search Engine Spoof

Search Engine Marketing for Small Businesses

There's an joke going around the Search Engine Marketing world that summarizes the frustration many small businesses feel about this subject. A website owner who was completely unfamiliar with search engines and website marketing asked for help marketing his website. He was advised to place Post-It notes with his website address in as many public rest rooms as he could. His website rose to the top of the ratings and the traffic to his site increased dramatically.

Unfortunately, this isn't as much of a joke as you might hope. Search Engine Marketing on a tight budget is very difficult and it's getting more difficult as the number of web pages on the Internet expand and as the search engines get more sophisticated. As a result, other marketing methods (like Post-It notes in rest rooms) are gaining favor again.

History of SEO: In the early years of search engines, Search Engine Optimization took advantage of search engine limitations. At first it was possible to put a thousand copies of your keywords in white text on a white background. Users would see a white area at the bottom of your page but the search engines would find that you mentioned "dynafocal widgets" a lot and would put you up at the top of the ratings. Soon the search engines figured out to test for this spoof and discount it. Next web developers tried "doorway pages" -- web pages designed exclusively to attract the search engines that humans never saw. The search engines figured out how to test for this spoof also and discounted it. This process of cat-and-amouse continued until quite recently. But now that the search engines have figured out how to rule out most spoofs, we have left only a couple of strategies:

Strategy 1: Have lots of good interesting content, update it frequently, have each page focus on a single subject (and hence a very small group of keywords), and have lots of pages.

Strategy 2: Gets lots of high-end websites that already have high ratings in the search engines to notice your site and place links to it using your primary keywords in the links.

Needless to say, carrying this out is neither easy nor cheap, which is why the folks with deep pockets are at a distinct advantage in the Search Engine Marketing wars right now. So what's a little guy (or gal) to do?

Low-tech solutions: While it may not be useful to post your web address in public rest rooms (or then again...), it is useful to get your web address out there every way you can. Some easy ways to do this are:

1. Put it on every piece of paper you send out, including invoices, letterhead, proposals, and even checks. Mike Hurley of Minuteman Press (617 244-7001) can do this for not much cost.
2. Put it at the bottom of every email you send out. Outlook or Outlook Express can do this for you.
3. Put it on your car, truck, or SUV. Ask Nick Papakyrikos of Signs by Tomorrow (617 244-2762) how little this costs. We were surprised.
4. Have it printed on giveaways like pens, baseball caps, or t-shirts.
5. Good old ordinary networking. Yes, it's hard work, but it works if you persevere.

High-tech solutions: Let's not write off the search engines completely. Here are some solutions to consider:

1. Look for unusual niches. If you make or provide something few others do, make sure you talk about it extensively on your website. If it's unusual, you will come up high in the search engines for keywords pertaining to your specialty.
2. Create an email newsletter and send it out to all your current and past clients and anyone who expresses an interest. Offer it explicitly on your site. But make sure it has an opt-out message at the bottom so people can make it go away if they wish. Rather than apologizing in advance, use the opt-out feature as a talking point to illustrate your high regard for your clients.
3. Look for specialized search engines and directories that focus on a specific industry or a specific location. Because they have a much more limited population, your chance of coming out high in the listing are much better than on Google. Of course, they don't have as many users as Google, but a higher percentage of their users are likely to be good prospects for you.
4. Use Pay-Per-Click (PPC) -- judiciously. The best-known one is Google AdWords. You can set this up yourself or with a little help from us. A word of caution: You must put in careful controls and check your account regularly -- costs for PPC can build up rapidly, and if you aren't getting calls from your ad it's money down the drain. We will be doing an entire newsletter on PPC soon.
5. Do as muchSearch Engine Optimization as you can afford. The search engines are unpredictable -- you may get a better position than you expect on Google -- and there are other search engines that may give you a good position.
6. Remember that search engine marketing is an inexact science. Be willing to try things, be willing to ditch things that don't work and try other things, and have patience.

As usual, CyberArtisans Web Developers is available to help you to market your website, whether using high-tech or low-tech solutions.

The Next Search Engine Spoof

What will they think up next? For the answer to this, look at the Portals column by Lee Gomes in today's Wall Street Journal (March 1, 2006, page B1). For non-subscribers, Gomes noted that "original content" is now the holy grail of search engines. The way you get picked up and noticed, apparently, is to have constantly-updated original content about a subject that is hot in the public mind. Unfortunately, as Gomes found out, the reality is a whole lot seedier than the theory.

Gomes contacted one of the websites looking for writers to produce "original content" and signed up to do some writing for them. What he was asked to do was to edit plagiarized copy from sites like WebMD WHO (World Health Organization) enough to make it "original." Whether the information ended up being accurate seemed a secondary consideration at best.

Does this help the small business website owner? Probably not. But rest assured that Google is already working on ways to figure out what is real "original content" and what is bogus.

Thanks for joining us this month. See you next month.

Want to see back issues of this newsletter? Go to http://www.cyberartisans.com/newsletter and select an issue.

Jonathan Spencer
CyberArtisans Web Developers

http://www.cyberartisans.com/
617-965-4110