Search Engines … all of us use them; rely on them to find what we want on the Internet. Most of us don’t care how they work as long as we can find what we want, quickly and with the fewest number of clicks possible. But for those of us with business websites, those of us who use the Internet to generate revenue, either by directly selling products or by generating leads, understanding search engines is sort of, well … necessary.

According to Forester Research:
85% of Internet users use search engines to find websites.
42% of those who bought from online retail sites arrived via search engines.

Lets start by understanding that there are two basic methods of using search engines to generate traffic to a website. The first is called pay-per-click (PPC) and the second is natural or organic search engine result listings. Both work, but do understand that there are trade-offs involving time and money. Organic search engine result listings take time to initially implement and offer no sure guarantee of your even being seen. PPC search engine result listing costs money each time someone clicks on your listing to go to your website. In an ideal world a combination of both are the best for generating desired traffic and maintaining and acceptable advertising budget.
There are a number of PPC distribution search engine services with Google and Yahoo! running the largest. They both use a standard keyword auction model for positioning keywords. This means that each company using the service specifies the amount they are willing to pay each time someone clicks on their keyword and goes to their website. Each company has contractual arrangement with many search engines like AltaVista, WebCrawler, MSN, etc. to distribute paid search engine listings to other search engines and directories. You may recognize them as sponsored listings or featured listings depending on the search engine you use.
Because this form of advertising is based on an auction model it requires a great deal of strategy as well as time as bids change on a constant basis.
Let’s look at just one example.  Lets say I am looking for a car, a sports car, a corvette, actually a 1965 Corvette.
Using results from a service provided by Yahoo! We can see the quantity of searches performed for given search phrases:

Keyword            Search Volume    Top Bid    Estimated Clicks
car                      2,241,317             0.99         112,065
sports car           117,485                 0.40         5,874
corvette             153,490                 2.00         7,674
1965 corvette    1,516                     0.20          75

Now, if I were a car dealer advertising my inventory on the Internet, it would make a lot more sense to get 75 people looking for a ’65 vette to come to my website than to try to get everyone looking for a car to come to my website.  As in all marketing, it’s better to run a focused campaign instead of trying to reach everyone. Search engines are no different.
You can buy advertising on dozens of PPC search engines some for as little as a penny per click depending on the competitiveness of the keyword.

A word of caution on pay-per-click advertising: it’s important to watch costs and track and measure results. Even traffic for as little as a penny, is a waste of money if it doesn’t produce your desired result. It’s quite possible to lose an entire advertising budget a penny or a nickel or a dime at a time because the wrong keywords are used, the wrong message is presented, or the destination website they reach is ineffective is converting the visitor to a tangible lead or sale. Most PPC engines have integrated tracking tools that allow a highly sophisticated way of monitoring conversion through to your website as well as conversions to sales or leads. Start small with test campaigns and work your way up. Don’t spend your entire advertising budget in a day, which is possible if you don’t do a little up front planning.

Organic search engine results listings take a different approach. Effective website marketing using organic listing involves the basic structure of the website itself: how it’s written and coded. Organic search engine results are based on factors determined by individual search engines. Some of the programming issues involved in accepted search engine optimization techniques include:

•    Types of keywords presented
•    The frequency of keywords relative to other text on your website
•    Hidden information called META tags within the HTML of your pages
•    Image "alt" attributes
•    Site navigation elements
•    HTML coding
•    The number of sites linking to you


Less then 2 percent of all websites are properly coded for optimal search engine indexing according to Forester Research.
Many business owners are reluctant to take the time, energy and or money to either learn HTML to do this level of programming themselves or to have professionals do the job for them.
With cost always an issue, its fair to assume that to properly implement a sound strategy for organic search engine result listings will add anywhere from 25 percent to 35 percent to the cost of the website. And remember, the search engines themselves are constantly changing, improving how the rankings and relevancies are determined. This means that additional time and effort will be required on an ongoing basis to research and implement changes to insure a maximum return on your investment.
The bottom line to this whole subject centers on commitment. Commitment to making the Internet and your website an integral part of how you do and grow your business today and into the future. An investment in your business website should be considered a long-term investment that will only grow in importance over time. Value its strategic importance not just to where you are now but where you want to be in the future.

		Ryan Vartoogian is president and founder of Spartan Internet Consulting Corp., a website development firm in Lansing.