This article is meant to address some of the concerns I often hear about search engine placement. The Internet has changed dramatically in the past five years and the search world changes almost daily. Keeping on top of it is a major task we work on continually. To give you an idea of what it takes to keep up with what's going on in the search engine world consider this:

• We spend more than $1,000 yearly on specialized software that allows us to optimize web pages and track search engine positions.
• We invested in our own server so we could get the detailed site access information that several local ISPs wouldn't give us access to, but are important for search engine optimisation. That costs us over $5,000 / year in hardware, software, connectivity and support.
• We spend more than $1,500 yearly for subscriptions to online publications specifically dedicated to search engine optimization issues.
• We spend at least 10 hours each week reading all this material.
• We spend a ton of time every week applying what we know.

You all have overhead in your businesses and this is the overhead in ours - the continual pursuit of knowledge doesn't come cheaply and despite the fact that it's all in our heads, it's pretty valuable stuff. I've seen companies spend $100K+ on their websites and spend no effort to get search engine positions. This is of course reflected in their often miserable rankings. I've always held the belief that you hire an electrician to work on wiring, lawyers to handle lawsuits and cobblers to fix shoes. Yet it never ceases to amaze me how companies are continually fooled into thinking website designers automatically know how search engines operate. I would estimate 90% don't.

On a little aside, it irks me when we get lumped into the "website design" category of business. Yes, we design websites. How do you market online without them? But, how many website developers understand the search engines? We've talked to many website designers, including some who get paid to develop the $100K+ websites, and not one of them has said they know Internet marketing and search engine positioning like we do.

I'm going to give you a little background on search engines and directories with some trends you should be aware of because if they don't affect you now, they will in the future.

Search Engines

You've probably all gotten those junk e-mails that say they'll submit your site to 300,000 search engines once a month for $19.95. What they don't tell you is that there are less than 10 search engines that matter, because collectively they generate over 95% of website traffic. They also don't tell you repeatedly submitting your site could cause a search engine to ban it from their listings over time. How's that for value?

When someone asks us how much it costs for top search engine rankings, I give the same answer: "It depends on the keyword or phrase you want to be highly ranked for, how competitive your category is and the state of your existing website". Let me explain some of these variables.

The keyword or phrase you want

Let's say you want to have the top ranked site for the keyword "Niagara" in the major search engines. I get asked how to do this a for other single words. Here's what it takes: money or time. Preferably both.

Let's start at the beginning. Your choice of keywords should be RELEVANT to the topic of your site. Just because your company is based in Niagara doesn't mean you should have the top ranked site. The same goes for "travel", "cars" or "oatmeal". A search conducted for a single generic word means the person searching has absolutely no idea what they want to do. What does a person who is looking for "travel" want to do? Do they want to fly to Germany, take a Caribbean cruise or backpack across Tibet? No idea.

The same also applies in two word searches, depending on what the words are. A search for "discount travel" is a generic search while one for "niagara caterers" is more specific. The latter example is also less competitive than the first (measured by the number of websites there could possibly be for those keywords). Again, knowing your audience and doing the appropriate research will allow you to come up with a list of relevant keywords.

You have to know your audience and know what keywords or phrases they are likely to be looking for and then provide that information on your site. Only then can you consider optimising your site for search engines.

How much Competition is there?

Let's go back to our two examples. Getting a top listing for "discount travel" will cost more than a top listing for "niagara caterers". Why? Consider this: a search in Google for "discount travel" showed 1,770,000 results. A search for "niagara caterers" showed 917 results. With the volume of sites all competing for a top listing under "discount travel", you're not going to get one cheaply. On the other hand, it's much easier to get a top listing under "niagara caterers", even with a completely unrelated site. (Do the search, you'll see what I'm talking about.)

So, the more generic the search, the more time consuming (hence expensive) it will be to obtain a top ranking. This is often the first case of Internet "sticker shock" companies have. You know the saying "Knowing just enough to be dangerous"? That applies 110% to my business. Everyone knows a little bit about search engines, but that little bit is usually based on the Internet of two or three years ago, when all you had to do was send a little e-mail to Yahoo and you managed to get the top spot in your category and search engines added you in a matter of days instead of weeks or months, if they add your site at all.

Here's another frustration that many site owners face. "I submitted my site but I can't find it" or "I submitted my site but it's #1000 of 25000 and how come it's not #1?" Here are the answers to those questions.

"I submitted my site but I can't find it"

Maybe it's there and maybe it's not. If you did a search for your exact website address and you didn't find your site, it's probably not in that search engine's database. Why? Here's a few reasons why it's not.

• You submitted your site when the search engine was having problems with its submission form.
• You submitted your site using some cheap automated service which was blocked by the search engine.
• You have a site that is hosted by some large company like Geocities which virtually all search engines block submissions from.
• Your site wasn't functioning when the search engine sent its spider to review the site.
• The search engine "updated" its database and your listing was lost. (The Alta Vista shuffle of 1999 was one major event although it happens all the time. How many of you knew about it?)

The State of Your Website

"I submitted my site but it's #1000 of 25000 and how come it's not #1?"

Again, there are many reasons that I'll try to summarize.

• You want your site to be listed in the top 10 under a generic keyword or phrase that isn't directly relevant to your business.
• You want to appear in the top 10 rankings in a very competitive category.
• Your site has very little content relevant to the phrase(s) you want to be found under.
• Your site is designed in such a way that it is not search engine friendly.
• You haven't spent any time developing links to your website, adding new content or resubmitting your site to the search engines.

A website is like a health club, or for that matter, a sewer. What you get out of it depends what you put into it. If you produce a stellar website full of content that is relevant to your users and to the search engines for the keywords that you want to be listed under, you have a much better chance of creating a top ranking website. If on the other hand you produce a standard website with moderate content that is widely available elsewhere and is not developed with your audience or search engines in mind, you have less of a chance to achieve good rankings.

Most people complain they have bad positions based on their "research" that in one or two search engines they're poorly placed. Many complaints are about bad positions for keywords that aren't relevant to their site or are so competitive that it would be difficult to achieve them. I'll pick on a site I've seen and checked out before. Mastermind Toys (http://www.mastermindtoys.com) is a Canadian company that sells cool educational toys, including Lego. Their site designers asked me if I could get the site top 10 placement for the keyword "lego". I said yes, but there were a few issues in the way.

• Any idea how competitive that keyword is?
  o Google: 928,000 results
  o AOL: 211,000 (including one top 10 result for "lego porn")
  o Yahoo!: 6 categories and 116 sites in the main category
• Their site is developed using dynamically generated pages that are not search engine friendly.
• Despite the fact their client paid more money than I make in a year for the website to be developed, they didn't want to pay the $10~12,000 it was going to cost for top search engine positioning because they felt it should have automatically been included in the cost of their very expensive site.

So, here's a company with a nice website nobody can find under their major search terms because of poor search engine optimisation and the preconceived notion that they were somehow "entitled" to top rankings simply because they paid a lot of money for site design. The two are NOT related unless the company that designs the website understands search engines AND it's spelled out in the contract that you are purchasing search engine optimization services. Many great looking websites are completely useless from a search engine perspective.

The Cost of Top Search Engine Placement

So, what does it take to get a good listing? Time and money. Preferably both. These days, it's important to set a budget for your website marketing. Even the basics will run you at least $1000 / year with a more realistic budget of $2000~5000 a year being necessary for even a small site to do proper search engine positioning work & maintenance. Here are some general steps.

1. Know your audience and know what keywords they are likely to be looking for your product or service under. Develop a list of generic and specific phrases that you would like to work on over time.
2. Have realistic expectations about how your site will be positioned for the keywords you choose. You're not going to achieve top rankings under "cellular phones" without putting out a lot of effort and that's costly. You could however, get a good ranking under "nokia 910 cellular phones" for relatively little effort.
3. Get a paid placement in Yahoo if you're not listed there already. On December 28, 2001, Yahoo changed their pricing policy from a $299 one-time fee to $299 per year to have your site considered and listed in their directory. That's around $500 in Canadian dollars. That's a BASIC step for most websites.
4. Submit to the other major search engines and directories properly. In some cases, that means paying. Did you know that submitting your site directly to one major search engine through their free submission procedure will result in your website being penalized with a lower ranking?
5. If you expect results from the search engines, monitor your website's ranking regularly (i.e. monthly). Unless you have signed up for this service with us, WE DO NOT DO THIS AUTOMATICALLY. It is a service we provide but not for free. This is worth being reminded about because like most businesses, there are often more pressing matters than the website's rankings. It's often better to outsource this work.
6. If you're not happy about your positioning, do something about it. You're not going to get better results simply by repeating the same actions. This reminds me of the time we were asked by a very skillful website design company that shall remain nameless to submit websites they developed to the major search engines. We were not asked to do any search engine optimization work - only submissions. We did that work and were asked later why it was that despite our submission work the sites still had lousy (i.e. not even top 30) search engine rankings. Submission is no guarantee of placement. As it turned out, we had submitted some sites that had no business being submitted without some basic optimization (page titles, anyone?), but we did as we were asked. Lesson learned on our part - never again.
7. Remember that search engine positioning is not a one-time expense. It is an ongoing process. If you do the work to optimize your site and monitor it's ranking, you will eventually have to put more work into it as your category becomes more competitive or when the search engine changes their ranking criteria. Also remember search engine positioning is only a part of the overall marketing picture for your website. If you're a local company with a local audience and you haven't displayed your website address in big letters on your commercial vehicle, don't be surprised that local people aren't coming to your website in droves.

Not every website is going to be the next e-commerce blockbuster that revolutionizes your business. Forget the hype and look at what your website can realistically accomplish for you given your audience, your product or service AND your budget of time or money you have available to commit.

Realistic expectations are sometimes hard to swallow, but you have to recognize the limitations of the Internet. It's not the magic bullet so many were hyping it up to be, but there are good opportunities for companies willing to invest the resources in it. I can show you the best ways if you're interested in learning.

Thank you for the trust you have shown in me and my business. I look forward to helping you soon.

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