“My initial website was very pretty, but absolutely useless in terms of generating business. Nobody visited it, full stop,” said Kelly.
The problem, as with many websites, is that it operated below the search-engine radar.
Frustrated, he engaged a specialist in search-engine optimisation to overhaul his online presence with a view to getting further up Google’s listings.
Today his site sits in the top four in any search for “personal development speaker” on Google.com, leading to a steady stream of speaking engagements for Kelly around the world.
“Most of my business still comes from word-of-mouth referrals, but I have increased the leads generated by my website more than 10-fold as a result of being at the top of the listings,” he said.
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As Kelly discovered, having a website is only the first battle when it comes to online marketing. To win the war, you have to attract visitors.
In excess of 90% of all referrals to e-commerce websites now come from the four main search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.
Yet only 10% of web users look beyond the second page of results, so if your business isn’t in the top 20 results, no matter how pretty the web page, it’s practically invisible.
There are two types of search engines — directories and web crawlers. Directories, such as Yahoo, have staff paid to consider every new website submitted before slotting them into categories or subsections.
Web crawlers such as Google or Ask.com work by sending out software programs — called bots — that trawl the web for information relevant to a user’s key word search.
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“Very many people think having a website is enough,” said Martin Murray, chief executive of Interactive Return, an internet marketing specialist. “It’s not. You need to have a search-engine-friendly website.”
Certain rules of thumb apply. Search engines read the contents of websites and judge how relevant they are for a certain search. “If you sell widgets, for example, you are going to need plenty of content with the word ‘widgets’ in it,” said Murray.
“Link popularity is also important. If there are lots of links to your site, the search engine will see your site as an authority, and that will push you up the rankings. The key is to submit your site to as many online directories as you can.”
One option here is to find out what your competitors’ links are. This is done by keying their web address in to the Google search box, preceded by the command “link:”.
There are other tricks of the trade. “Having online news- letters or ezines with lots of links to your own website, a blog with links back to your site or online PR will also push you up the ratings,” said Murray.
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Blogs are very “search-engine friendly” because they are rich in key words, and contain a large amount of text.
For Ivan Lynch, director of the Ennis-based bespoke tourism firm Authentic Ireland, a €10,000 investment in search-engine optimisation saw his company jump from page four in the American Google rankings to a current ranking in the top 10 for “Ireland tours, travel and vacation” — and rising.
This has translated into a 25% boost in bookings. “Our business is dependent on the website for attracting customers,” said Lynch. “Even though we have in-house web designers, there were things we were doing that were wrong and we didn’t even know.”
Search-engine optimisation — or search-engine marketing, as it is also called — may seem like a dark art to the uninitiated, but you can do quite a lot of it yourself.
To maximise traffic you also can opt to pay for advertisements on search engines, typically paying a fee each time somebody clicks through to your site from a search engine page. A far cheaper way of generating web traffic is to include your web address on all your business stationery.
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More than 20% of web visits come from web referrals, which means making sure your web address is on e-mail footers, too.
“At the very least you should be able to find your own company by Googling it,” said Michael Heraghty, Dublin-based author of Website Findability: How to Get Traffic from Google and Other Search Engines.
“You’d be surprised how many websites don’t feature, simply because of the way they were designed. Equally, the principals in any company should be easily found by Googling too — because prospective clients very often run searches on individuals — yet here again they very often aren’t.”
Among the most common problems is the overuse of graphics. “Images should be used sparingly and should not contain text,” said Heraghty.
“One way to check if your site is search-engine friendly is to click and drag your mouse across the screen. Text that can’t be highlighted can’t be seen by search engines.”
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An “organic” search-engine optimisation campaign concentrates on building search- engine awareness through use of key words, content and links. Typically, it can take between six and nine months to get to the top of the listings.
In the meantime, one of the quickest ways to appear on the first page is to buy your way in through sponsored links and web advertisements such as Google AdWords.
One person who has cracked organic search-engine optimisation is the Cork-based marketing consultant Simon O’Keefe. Searchers keying in “marketing consultants Ireland” to Google.com will find his company, Aspire, at the top of the listings.
Being number one isn’t necessarily a magic wand, he says. “People might Google a product and buy it, but they don’t tend to buy professional services in that way,” said O’Keefe. “However, they use it to narrow down the field, so it certainly doesn’t do us any harm. There is also a prestige element to being at the top of the listings.”
SIMPLE STEPS TO GET AHEAD ONLINE
FIRST, make sure you have registered with all the big search engines. Their sites will have a facility enabling you to do this, usually for free.
Search engines look for web links to your site, so establishing reciprocal links with complementary businesses or with forums and directories will push your site higher up the results page.
Text should be rewritten to make it more appealing to search engines.
Use as many key words, including misspelt versions, as you think a potential customer is likely to put in the search box to find you.
Use these key words as often as possible, bearing in mind most search engines have a facility to filter out mindless repetition.
One-word searches are rare, so ideally use phrases and not single words.
Google offers a free key-word suggestion tool on its site to help you come up with some that might work for your business.
Having multiple pages on your site is important, as engines such as Google don’t find websites, but web pages. Create lots of pages and target a search phrase with each.
In highly competitive sectors, such as travel or financial services, it may be better to opt for slightly less-popular search phrases and establish a niche to bring your site to the top of a search listing.
Where you place your key words on the page is also important. They must appear on the title tags — the names you put on your web pages and which appear at the top of the user’s web browser.