Internet search engines such as Google.com drive millions of visitors to Web sites every day. The search engines don't care whether your company is large or small; they care only whether your Web site matches the characteristics that they use to rank companies in their search results. By designing your site with these characteristics in mind, you can optimize your company's placement by the major search engines.

	Steven N. Czetli

Companies ranked highly by the Internet search engines can convert visitors to prospects and prospects to sales. In the third quarter of 2002, online sales were up 7.8 percent, while off-line sales rose only 0.3 percent. By paying attention to search engine optimization techniques, you can maximize your company's position in the results, according to Abu Noaman, founder and chief executive officer of Elliance. Noaman offered his advice for optimizing search engine results in a presentation last week for members of the Pittsburgh Technology Council.

Develop a strategy. You cannot proceed blindly with search engine optimization. Noaman advised, "Nobody can be No. 1 on all search engines." You need to develop a strategy that should include an assessment of the target audience you wish to reach, the goals of your search engine optimization efforts and the keywords you wish to prioritize.

Remember also to study the success of your competitors in the search engine rankings. You can do this yourself, by checking your competitors' placement in results returned by the major search engines.

Analyze your site. Basic site design has a significant impact on your site's search engine placement. Noaman cautioned that search engines cannot index graphics; therefore, home pages that consist exclusively of graphics, even with embedded text, are "doomed." Search engines do not handle complex HTML or JavaScript well. "Search engines are very dumb -- give them dumb things and they will be happy." Furthermore, "The more visual complexity you add, the more confused the search engines will be."

Engaging, compelling copy is the primary method of attracting visitors to your site, as well as the best fodder for the search engines. Noaman sees many well-designed Web sites that do not utilize intriguing copy. He also suggested placing within your site components to transform visitors into sales leads. These include sales inducers and dialogue devices.

A sales inducer provides information designed to overcome the psychological hurdles of decision-makers. A dialogue device "breaks the barrier" and allows visitors to your site to engage with you. Web sites that don't include these devices won't do a good job of converting visitors to prospects.

Don't take shortcuts. Some companies promise automated submission of your site to the major search engines, or guaranteed placement in the search results. According to Noaman, "Each search engine has different rules, a different personality." Automated methods don't work, and no company can guarantee high placement of your site by the search engines.

Noaman advocates that you manually submit your Web site to each search engine for indexing. Most major search engines will expedite the indexing or re-indexing of your site for a nominal fee.

Pay to play? Most major search engines now offer the option of presenting paid advertising when the user performs a query on particular keywords. According to Noaman, this is the only way that you can achieve guaranteed placement on the search engines. However, this technique can "burn a lot of money very fast."

Noaman advocates using paid placement strategically, at times when the additional traffic will be worth the expense -- at product launch times, for example. He adds that the "organic" approach of Web site optimization -- using basic techniques to improve your company's ranking by the major search engines -- will continue to yield results whether you pay or not.

Specialty advertising's appeal

Giveaway items ranging from scratch pads to golf bags are widely used to reinforce a range of business strategies. But errors in their use or selection also can damage the giver. In a May 1 presentation hosted by the U.S. Small Business Administration, David Satina of Brand First Promotions outlined the promise, as well as potential pitfalls, involved in the use of specialty advertising items.

Satina's company represents 4,500 makers of pens, key fobs, golf accessories and other giveaway items. Such items serve a variety of promotional purposes, including attracting surfers to the agency's Web site, creating goodwill and even reducing complaints.

More important, by motivating someone to contact a company whether it's at a trade show information booth, over the phone or at the office, small freebees help companies identify potential customers and keep existing customers satisfied.

Their effectiveness extends to channel partners and even the company's own employees.

In addition to reminding people of the company's name, giveaway items can help define the firm's brand through the items' design, quality of material and suitability as gifts, Satina said. But it's a two-edged sword. Poorly executed design, flimsy materials and other shortcomings of giveaway items can create an unintended negative image of the giver's brand. "Inexpensive gifts are fine," he said, "but cheap gifts are not."

Promotional products -- custom-imprinted giveaway items which range from pencils and bookmarks at the low end of the scale to executive gifts costing hundreds of dollars at the other extreme -- can support and reinforce a variety of business strategies, according to Satina.

They range from simply exposing the company name to current and prospective customers, to building brand loyalty, securing partnerships and alliances, reinforcing advertising campaigns, providing sales staff incentives and building employee morale. And he cites studies to support it.

For example, sales letters, when accompanied by promotional products and incentives, nearly quadrupled in their results. Thank-you letters, when accompanied by business gifts, produced 40 percent higher satisfaction ratings. Trade show booth traffic as well as post-show memories and goodwill more than doubled when gifts were used.

And retailers as well as business-to-business distributors all benefited from more leads, sales and customer retention when gifts were used to accompany a customer's transaction. Gifts, premiums, and promotional items are particularly effective in retaining existing customers, according to Satina.

In fact, a company's base of existing customers may be the most fruitful place to apply a well-crafted program of gifts -- which have proven more effective than cash in generating results.

After all, it is five times more expensive to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one, he noted. And with the average sales call costing upward of $250, a gift in the $5 to $10 range is easy to justify -- providing the gift item is selected with the right audience in mind.

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Former Pittsburgh Press business editor Steven N. Czetli edits and publishes TechyVent/Pittsburgh, a free, regional e-mail newsletter that recommends and provides detailed information on the region's most useful business events. For more information on these and other events go to newsletter.techyvent.com