It was the best of times. It was the dodgiest of times. I'm
sorry Mr Dickens but the birth pains of the web revolution, as
with the French one, also require expression in the superlative.
It was unbelievable, unaccountable, indefinable and dodgy as
Hell. Good money following bad through the S-bend of e-commerce.
Those were the days, but have they changed for the better?

It was around about this time at the dawn of the new Century
that I first heard the phrase Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
Although back then it was unsophisticated and tended to mean
little more than keyword stuffing in page meta tags. This meta
information being the initial lines of HTML code that serve to
define and describe web page function and format. This early SEO
was more geared towards getting eyeballs to the site at all
costs rather than pre qualifying referrals. It was the era of
dot com companies going to market with inflated values based
upon artificially boosted traffic figures. When the snake oil
salesmen could reel off estimates of $100 per online member, and
still keep a straight face.

In the race to IPO things got swept under the carpet. Rules got
bent. Ethics got twisted. It was not uncommon to type a high
profile company name or brand into a search engine and be
presented with a selection of competitors and porn sites as
rival webmasters tried to manipulate the system with keyword
spamming. Traffic was God. Big numbers meant big valuations. Get
to float, cash in then get the Hell out of Dodge.

The metrics were flawed as well. The money managers failed to
grasp the technology and were taken for a ride. Advertising
revenue was based on easily manipulated statistics and was duly
exploited. The biggest rort was the use of hits as a measuring
stick. Even today people who should know better still refer to
hits as being somehow meaningful in terms of judging a site
performance without realizing what it actually means. A hit is
recorded every time the host server is "hit" with a request for
a specific element. Most web pages display a range of components
so that for any given page display the server will be hit
multiple times. It is therefore quite simple for a sneaky web
master to deliberately distort this figure.

I can still remember analyzing a competitor's site to find that
their nice big header image had been sliced into 100 pieces and
so registered at least 100 hits every time it was loaded,
distorting the performance figures and hence advertising revenue
for their banner ads. Other techniques involved using
transparent gifs and JavaScript code to continually refresh page
elements. The creative agencies either did not know or turned a
blind eye as the cash rolled in until it all hit the fan in mid
2000. A lot of the slick talkers went back to selling Gold Coast
swamp land but in many ways the reputation of the industry never
fully recovered.

That truism about damned lies and statistics could have been
written specifically for the web. If it can be measured it can
be tricked. Stats mean everything and nothing. The only stat
that matters for a web business is the effect on the bottom
line. Either your website is saving you money or it is bringing
it in either directly or indirectly. Intangibles such as
branding are nice spin offs but if this is the only reason you
are online then you are in trouble. The web is a pull technology
not a push one. Find out what people are looking for in your
space and then target these keywords. It is not just about
getting traffic it is about getting the right traffic.
Attracting people who are in a frame of mind to buy and
directing them to your sales team. It is about building specific
calls to action into your site and then tracking these.

The trick is that times have changed. It is now not just about
stuffing your meta tags with every key term you think might
relate to your business. Internet search has grown up and
evolved as have the search engines. Search companies reacted
against the tide of SEO spamming by moving towards relevance
listings. Google came out of nowhere and blindsided the industry
to dominate search. If you weren't in Google you didn't exist.
The old rules no longer applied, or at least, not as much as
they used to. The cataloguing and ranking techniques were
shrouded in mystique and marketers were subtly pushed towards
paid listings. First it was Google and Yahoo then the other
search companies went "me too" and jumped on board. It is a
trend that continues to define the market.

The Internet has grown up as well. It is no longer the side show
of the late nineties. It has infiltrated everywhere and
increasingly everyone. According to Netcraft (www.netcraft.com), who run
regular surveys of web server usage on the Internet, in February
2000 there were at least 10 million web sites in operation (a
conservative estimate). In its May 2004 report this result has
grown significantly to over 50 million sites. It is little
wonder that on the web you can be lost in the crowd and the
search engines are very quick to have their hands out for your
hard earned lucre.

Looking at the main players, Google has Adwords and Yahoo has
Overture. New kids on the block Sensis are making noises on the
fringes. There is money to be made in paid search listings.
Every day more and more people are making purchasing decisions
through their mouse and keyboard, whether at work or at home.
You might have the best products or services but are you getting
this message to them before your competitor? Paid listings can
help at least get you on the same page, even if it is in a small
advertisement on the side or above the main listings.

The key is however to choose the right horses for each course. A
smart marketer should choose wisely. Paid listings are not the
be all and end all of Search Engine Optimisation. A good
"natural" listing will always generate better results than a
contrived paid one, however obtaining good rankings are an
ongoing process. The paid links are ads and look like ads,
however they are at least contextual to the search term rather
than the splatter gun approach of other forms of Internet
advertising. Anecdotal evidence suggests that people are still
hesitant about clicking on these advertisements in the side bars
however the Google and Overture statistics (that word again)
indicate that a significant number of users of search engines
do. It would be silly to ignore this technique entirely however
it is equally folly to limit the exploration of search engine
marketing to the paid services.

The nature of pay per click means that you are in a bidding war
for your chosen keywords from the outset. The system works easy
enough allowing you to set bid limits and play a range of
keyword combinations. How much you will have to pay to secure a
top listing will depend upon the popularity of the term. Want to
nail down top spot for Tractor Maintenance and it could cost you
only $0.10US per click. Try for something competitive like Web
Design and you will be stung around $2.54US. Top of the scale is
Mesotheliona, that nasty cancer you get from asbestos dust.
Fuelled by litigation payouts the top bid is currently $100US
per click on Overture (www.overture.com). Unbelievably four US
law firms are paying this price. According to Overture 36,695
searches were done for this term in June 2004, not to mention
the other possible keyword combinations. Expensive stuff if you
get the clicks, it all boils down to how much a click through is
worth to your business. That difficult concept for old school
web marketers, return on investment.

Running a paid campaign will help boost your overall site
ranking in the search engines. Doing this alone, however is
unlikely to get you the prized top spots for your chosen keyword
string. That is, unless you have chosen a very niche term with
little competition. In which case you could probably have got
there without pay per click.

Another key component in this process is to make sure that when
choosing the target keyword combination (known as a string) that
you are realistic. If you are a small shoe store based in outer
suburban Melbourne don't shoot for a highly singular generic
term like "Shoes" by itself. Be more specific regarding product
and location. The type of person that will respond to any online
pitch is likely to know how to use a search engine and use
keyword combinations to narrow their search results. Better to
target "Ladies Shoes Melbourne" or similar combinations thereof
to make better use of your paid listing spending. It is no point
boxing out of your division on a global scale if you are
targeting local business.

Accountable web marketing is achievable, however you do get what
you pay for. After the crash when the bottom fell out of the
market companies retreated in-house or farmed out work to back
yarders that were prepared to work for food. Cutting corners and
scrimping delivered cheap sites and even cheaper results. The
web site became a necessary evil rather than a valuable tool,
the thunder box out the back rather than the en-suite. When it
failed to work miracles it was fobbed off as a white elephant.

It became a classic Catch 22 situation. Content is and always
was king, but once bitten and several times shy the marketing
managers, who could have made best use of the technology,
refused to spend their budgets on updates. So, at the very time
when the search engines started rewarding context and content,
the corporate world retreated into safe static options or the
short term fix of high profile flash dynamics. Two extremes,
neither of which deliver good long term search engine
performance. If your site is not optimized then you have no
alternative but to pay for referrals. If your content is stale
and boring then who is going to buy from you. The site is
hamstrung from the start and destined to fail. So the cycle
continues.

You get what you pay for. That is the e-marketing lesson. That
doesn't mean you should throw bucket loads of cash at the
nearest pony tailed web designer bouncing on his Pilates ball.
What it does mean is that you should make a realistic online
plan complete with goals and targets and exit strategy and then
commit to it. If you are going to dabble in pay per click then
be prepared to fight for a first page listing. If you are number
22 on Google Adwords for your primary key term then your half
hearted listing will deliver half hearted results at best. More
dollars round the S- bend. Use the tool aggressively. Do not
expect miracles from token outlays.

Mostly, however the lesson is to use multi channels. The
starting point should always be your site. The mistake of the
late nineties was that companies tried to trick search engines
to deliver traffic. The task now is not to fool Google but to
work with it. Search engines continually espouse the virtues of
their technology in producing relevant results so work to make
your site as relevant to your target key terms as you can. A
keyword spammer will soon be exposed for what they are but a
site tailored to reinforce its core contextual message will
prevail. The key to this is content and it is important to
realize that content imbedded in images and flash movies cannot
be read by search engines. It might be painful but some surgery
may be required.

A good URL is also important but it requires a user to be
already exposed to your branding. This is no problem if you are
Coca Cola but a worry if you are Fred's Smash Repairs. New
business is unlikely to come directly through your URL. Think
holistically.

Developing an effective website is a balancing act between four
competing elements, Design, Usability, Bandwidth and Search
Engine Optimisation. Try too hard on one and you will impact on
another. Jacob Neilsen is often held up as the guru of web site
usability however anyone who has been to his site (www.useit.com) and implemented
his suggestions without question will soon recognise that he is
to design what Dr Pritican is to Christmas dinner. On the flip
side how many times have you been frustrated by the inability to
print off a key piece of information from the funky flash site
that you just stumbled upon, or left in frustration whilst that
self indulgent animated splash screen took forever to load on
your dial up connection. Similarly a perfectly optimised web
site for search engines would consist of nothing but ugly easily
searched and catalogued plain HTML text. The art is therefore a
balancing act in determining the level of compromise to suit
your business needs.

This then is the key question. What is your core business
requirement from your website? Unless your site achieves this
you will not be satisfied so define it and then tailor your site
to achieving it. Return on Investment for a website is not just
about "paying for the bloody thing." It is about sustaining it
at a level that maximises its effectiveness. Set and forget is a
recipe for failure and different businesses will have different
capacities for achieving this quickly. The specific goals may
vary depending on the industry and the individual business
concerned.

A few points to consider…

â?¢ Put specific calls to action on your site. The best measure of
success for a website is tangible client contacts. Encourage
visitors to use the website contact information by offering web
only deals or other incentives.

â?¢ Target your primary selling points and products in your
keyword strings and cover appropriate cultural/market
terminology variations. (For example Mobile Phone in Australia,
Cell Phone in US, and Hand Phone in Japan; or Crayfish in
Victoria and Lobster in NSW)

â?¢ Don't put too much information on your site. People use the
web increasingly for research. Put enough content up to convince
them of your credentials then encourage visitors to contact you
directly for more information and make it as easy as possible to
do so. Put your phone number on the site. Monitor and respond to
email enquiries immediately.

â?¢ Set realistic review periods. Different search engines have
differing lead times to catalogue new sites and index. A new
site can often take up to three months to fully make its way
through the system. Be patient … to a point.

â?¢ Monitor frequently. Search engines and their listing criteria
change frequently and often arbitrarily. Tweaks and changes will
be required sooner or later. Have a plan in place with your web
developer for reacting to any sizeable position drops. Sooner or
later your competitors will react and you have to be ready