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"Pulling" Your Customers On The Internet: Part One Cliff Ennico www.creators.com "I am a small one person business selling football-related collectibles. I have had my own Website since 1992 -- almost one of the first people to have a site. Over the years, of course, technology has drastically changed, and my positioning on internet searches like Google has dropped significantly as more and more people are getting into this game. How can I improve upon this without spending an arm and a leg? Do you know of anyone that can offer improvements and make those changes on an existing Website? I would ideally love to get a focus group to critique my Website, but I know that can run into a small fortune. Do you have any ideas, suggestions or references to help out us small guys? Hold on a second - you have had a Website since 1992, and only RECENTLY has your position in the search engine rankings gone down? Must be one heck of a Website . . . There was a time, not too long ago, that I used to think the phrase "Internet marketing" was a contradiction in terms. Traditional marketing is all about "pushing" products to consumers, and on the Internet you cannot "push" or force viewers to see things they don't want to see. An entire industry of software products - from antispam filters to "pop-up" blockers - has sprouted up overnight for the specific purpose of preventing marketers from getting their messages through to you when you're online. You cannot "push" on the Internet, but what you CAN do is "pull" them to your Website. On the Web, the consumer runs free like a wild stallion, going wherever its head takes him. You are the one who must "corral" the free-range consumers and lead them to your water. When people go looking for stuff on the Internet, what do they use? A search engine, of course. That's where your advertising focus should be - letting the consumers think they have found you, and have made the "free choice" to click on a link to your Website and see what you've got to offer. The first thing you have to do is "optimize" your Website for search engines, so that when people go looking for the stuff you sell, the engine lists your Website as one of the top ten "hits" that show up on the search query results page. This is as much an art than an exact science, and involves picking the most commonly used "keywords" people use to search for your stuff and making sure those "keywords" are embedded in your Website so the search engine "crawlers" can find them. Since you have limited funds, it may be worth your while to learn how to do this yourself. Several how-to books exist on this subject, most notably "Search Engine Visibility" by Staci Thurow (Pearson Education, $29.99), "Search Engine Advertising" by Catherine Seda (New Riders, $29.99), and "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies" by Peter Kent (Wiley, $24.99). If doing anything yourself on a computer gives you the willies, there is a growing industry of search engine optimization (SEO) consultants who for fees ranging from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars can use advanced statistical methods to help identify the keywords that will drive search engine traffic to your Website. A search for "SEO Consultant" on any search engine will yield about 500,000 results, many from computer professionals in India and other parts of the world who may be willing to provide world-class service for a much lower rate than U.S. consultants. The Organization of Search Engine Optimization Professionals ( www.seopros.org ) was formed in 2001 to develop "best practices" and standards for this industry - go to their Website and click on "SEO Consultant Directory" for a list of their members nearest you. Once you have optimized your Website for search engines, you don't just sit there waiting for the "hits" to happen. It is now time to engage in "search engine marketing" - creating ads for your Website that will appear next to the search query results when someone is searching for the stuff you sell. More on that next week . . . Cliff Ennico ( cennico@legalcareer.com ) is a syndicated columnist, author and host of the PBS television series 'Money Hunt'. His latest book is 'Small Business Survival Guide' (Adams Media, $12.95). This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at www.creators.com . COPYRIGHT 2006 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.