E-Quipped: Search engine marketing drives Web site traffic

"Build it and they will come" might have worked for Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones in the movie classic "Field of Dreams," but chances are it won't work for your Web site.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can boost your rankings, drive more traffic to your Web site, and provide you with coveted Google love. But before you go out and hire an expert, there are a few do-it-yourself strategies you can put in place if you take the time to understand the dynamics of SEO.

For this, I need to bring in Jim Carlson, the TMA+Peritus director of SEO, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SMO (Social Media Optimization), to give you a few tips on how to implement a search strategy for your site.

First off, start with your analytics package, know thy visitor and establish a baseline. How many visitors does your site receive on average? What is the mix of your current visitors -- are they direct load, do they come from referring sites or search engines? This is important because improved SEO will increase both search volume percentages and overall hits to the site. Also, check what keywords your customers and prospects are currently using to find you.

Second, search thyself on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Make sure you can find yourself -- so to speak -- by your brand name, by your industry type and service, and by location. You need to be visible on these search engines in order to be relevant.

Step three, work on your Web site content. If you're using too much industry jargon, you might be penalizing yourself. Web text needs to be written as your customer would describe your business -- after all, that's how they'll deep web search for you. Then compare your copy to the keywords from the analytic stage. Keep expanding your content; this helps establish consumer confidence and search engine exposure. Next, update the content on your site regularly; search engines reward fresh content, which is why blogs, news items and seasonal updates are so important.

Now, here are two final tricks. Make certain your prospects can contact you from every page on your site. This will allow them to contact you easily, but more importantly, this will go a long way in determining location-based searches. Finally, your meta tags (title, description and keywords) need to match your content. People tend to "stuff" keywords in these locations, but if the keywords do not reflect the content, search engines will ignore them. Worse yet, they could actually penalize you for SPAMing the engines.

As Burt Lancaster said in "Field of Dreams," "Is there enough magic in the moonlight out there to make this dream come true?" The answer is yes, you can make your search dreams come true, but it's not magic -- it's actually quite scientific.

Next Sunday's E-Quipped: PR 101.

Tom Marks is president and managing partner of TMA+Peritus: A Strategic Interaction Agency. Jim Carlson is the agency's director of SEO, SEM and SMO and helps Tom understand algorithms, bits and bytes. Find them online at www.tmaperitus.com or offline in their offices in Wausau and Madison.