The search begins: Search Engine Optimization captures relevant consumers.

• Author: Stum, Jamie Huish
• Position: PLANNING GUIDE

You've got a dynamite Website and your market research says tons of people need your product. So how do you reel these elusive consumers in from cyberspace? The key is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, which is much more than making your company show up first on a Google search (although that's one of the end goals). Officially, it's the process of improving volume and quality of traffic to a Website.

Search engines use robotic spiders which crawl all over the Web indexing information. After the spiders have traversed a Website, returns are ranked. SEO uses algorithmic search results using the targeted keywords that those searching for your business are most likely to type in. Whenever anyone performs an online search, the results are displayed according to the index.

Think about when you perform a search using any search engine. How often do you click beyond the first 10 matches? Not too often. SEO is a business of its own because research has proven that the higher a site ranks in a list of search results, the more searchers will click on the site. And according to national SEO firm Bruce Clay, Inc., the more organic searchers any business has translates into more profits.

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In the early 1990's the search engines were divided by topic, mostly by industry, and search engines were more like directories of information. Search engine optimization entered the search scene in about 1996 as search engines became more sophisticated.

Today SEO is considered part of any good marketing strategy. Experts say if your business is not accessible by Internet, it may as well not exist. SEO takes into consideration search patterns and what people are searching for. It can also delve into the search engine indexing problems that prevent a site from being fully spidered by search engines.

There are three ways to work SEO into your business strategy: Search engine optimizers may...