The Web is neither Bonanza nor Boondoggle, but is simply a new medium for presenting information and for commerce, requiring as much marketing, promotion and distribution as any other medium in order to be a profitable strategy. Theoretically, everyone in the world can view your Web site and respond the way you intend, but only if they can find it and are stimulated to respond.

The twin goals of your Web site strategy are getting customers/clients to your site and then having them respond to your information. Accomplishing these goals is 25% art and 75% science.

The art we all understand: attractive, engaging, interesting, professionally done. But what is the science of a productive, income-generating Web site?

It begins with strategic planning. Web sites that fail, usually do so by not putting as much time into planning as they do in the actual Web site construction. The mantra is "Plan-Create-Promote-Evaluate." No creation should proceed without a detailed plan well in place. Certainly things will evolve throughout development and the ongoing life of the site, but having a good structure helps to integrate appropriately.

Consider the following analogy. Real estate agents cannot begin to sell a home until it is built or well along in construction. A contractor cannot build until the architect designs the home, usually to meet certain criteria. Rooms can be added on later appropriately during construction or decades later if the basic initial design was clear and flexible.

Don't go to your marketing and sales departments after the site is up. Make them part of the planning with your graphic/production team. Actually, put marketing and sales in charge of the strategic planning process with your Web promotion/marketing specialist. The production team must defer at this stage to the needs of the strategic goals of the Web site.

Second is clear navigation: getting clients and customers around the site so they are always oriented to the information or products that make the site profitable. A site that navigates easily and informs the guest clearly where they are at all times and what you have to offer will get them around to the information and leave them pleased not frustrated.

Step back from your intimate knowledge of your site and its information. View its navigability like a novice to the information, looking at your site for the first time. Remember visiting a major metropolitan city for the first time and how disoriented you were for a while. Then, after greater exposure, you became more oriented. On the Web, people scan--they don't read. They will not hang out for a while like you did in your visit to that new city. They will scan around, and if they don't see what interests them or if they get a little lost finding things, they will take the first flight out, a click of the mouse!

Third, it is Findability, Findability, Findability!

Web site Findability begins with being found by the major Search Engines: Excite, HotBot, AOL Search, Netscape, Alta Vista, Infoseek, LookSmart, Lycos, Northern Light, PlanetSearch, Snap, WebCrawler. These search engines vie for dominance for use and continually make new liaisons and arrangements to gain that dominance. Each SE sends out a robot program to your ISP server to index your site by traveling through your site locating information that will be stored in their database.

SE's use many variabilities to determine your placement in search results for keywords, and each SE indexes your site for their database according to different criteria. There is no way to create your site to be found in the top 10 search results in all of the engines. Before beginning a site for Sterling Road Jewelry, we searched 9 SE's using the keyword "custom jewelry" to see who ranked high. Evaluating the top 10 results on each of the 9 SE's, we only found 4 sites that were in more than one of the top 10 results. That means that out of 70+ sites, only 4 were in more than one SE's top 10 results!

The following are some of the variables determining search engine findability.

ORGANIC STRUCTURE:
Search engine findability starts with the original construction so that there is an organic structure that tells the search engines what they need to know to properly index the site for users to find what you have to offer. The following are some of the things the robot indexing programs look for when evaluating your site. Consider the following:

1) The use of keywords in the <title>. These words are not viewed on the actual site, but they are seen at the top of your Browser screen. The <title> is the first place most SE's evaluate. Allan Bernardi's real estate site is a good example of a high findability title: "Half Moon Bay real estate, homes, rural acreage, commercial and coastal property by San Francisco." Or, R.Mason Fine Arts: "Endangered species, wildlife, pet original artwork for sale & endangered wildlife educational exhibition." Note that the company name does not appear. Since there is not a high recognition of their name, no one would search for their name. A high recognition company name would be included.

2) A short descriptive sentence should be at the top of your Home Page. This descriptive sentence should have 20 to 25 of your most important keywords in the sentence. Use only those words that searchers might use and eliminate as many adjectives and other descriptive words that are not keywords. This should also be a Header tag <H1> not a font tag <FONT SIZE="4">. An example from Allan Bernardi's real estate site: "Half Moon Bay real estate and coastal property on the San Mateo County Coastside, south of San Francisco for real estate, homes, land and commercial property."

3) The type of content and its structure. Your text should reflect the keywords that users would use in searching for you. These keywords should be placed strategically throughout. Also, create smaller pages with fewer text. If you have articles or heavy content pages, place them lower in the structure of the site. There is a percentage rule about how often the keyword is used related to the total number of words. This is called Keyword Density, or keyword weight.

4) Meta Tags are used by some SE's, but not all. Meta tags tell the SE's that use them what you think are the most relevant keywords for your site and are hidden to the viewer. If a description META tag is included, they will use it for their search result description of your site. For Allan Bernardi, we used the following on the Home Page: <META name="keywords" content="Half Moon Bay real estate, homes for sale, property, coastal views, rural property, coastside property, rural real estate, acreage, buildable lots, horse property, coastal land, investment property, rural acreage, Half Moon Bay real estate, commercial real estate, income property, retail buildings for sale, office buildings, commercial buildings, Half Moon Bay real estate"> <META name="description" content="Half Moon Bay real estate for buyers and sellers of homes, rural acreage and commercial property south of San Francisco California.">

Different Meta Tags should be used on subsequent pages. For example, on the Homes page, we have <title>Half Moon Bay real estate, homes for sale, buildable property, Coastside homes</title>
<META name="description" content="Half Moon Bay real estate for buyers and sellers of homes, property south of San Francisco California.">
<META name="keywords" content="Half Moon Bay real estate, homes for sale, property, San Mateo County Coastside, coastal views, rural property, coastside property, Half Moon Bay real estate">

Using the above technique of different keywords in the title and Meta tags on subsequent pages, you can weigh different pages for findability for different keywords. If you use too many keywords on your home page, the most important keywords related to the total number you use is reduced and your relevance is reduced. Be aware also that SE's will bump you if they find that you are spamming by repeatedly using the same keywords to get a high ranking. So do not insert "Half Moon Bay real estate, Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate,Half Moon Bay real estate......"

5) Have links to all your other pages on the Home page and on every other page of your site if possible. This ensures that the SE robot gets to all the other pages and considers what you have provided for them to determine your ranking.

6) Popularity is also a variable to consider. How many links you have to your site from other sites indicates to the SE that others consider you important enough to link to, so the SE may consider you an important site for the content area they are indexing in. This means that you should have as many links to your site as possible. SE's also note how many links you have going out to others.

The above are important variables, but there are many other things that can be included in the structure of the site to push up your ranking in each search engine. The average Web developer or talented graphics/production team in your company responsible for creating your site will usually not have the training and marketing expertise to do this crucial first-level strategic planning and Web creation for findability. Make sure you use a Web development company who strategies with you from the beginning. Or, hire a Web marketing/promotion specialist to work with you and your development team..

THE SUBMISSION PROCESS:
Search engine findability now requires an initial submission of the site to the search engines.

Some SE's will index your whole site from your Home Page (index.html), while others require you to submit every page you want them to index. This process can be done by special programs like Web Promote or Submit It. But, some SE's don't recognize these automatic programs. We have found that submissions have a better guarantee of being accepted if you take the time to submit individually to each search engine. The first group requires submitting all your pages; the second group only needs the index.html; and, the third group requires you to find the appropriate section in their directory and choose where you want to submit. Companies like the Academy of Web Specialists^TM can offer you specialized services tailored to your needs.

Can I submit once and then be finished with the process? Definitely not! An ongoing evaluation of the site's placement using computer programs developed to indicate your positioning on the search engines related to other sites is essential. Even if you do not make changes to your site, sites are being submitted by the thousands every day, and many will be your competitors. You may be found very high, even the top 10, on any given week and find yourself #25 a week later. Not only will new sites be coming out that push you down, but other Web marketing teams will study your site and copy how you got such a high rating. They will then try to do you even one better.

If you are serious about using the Web to increase revenue for your company or get the information out, you must consider doing this process quarterly at a minimum, preferably monthly. Do the research on your location, look at your competitors, and followup with modification of your site to raise placement. There are many modifications that can be made to help your chosen search engines recognize you as the one who fits the keyword used in their search.

As important as SE's are to findability, you must submit to other search facilities for a successful site. There are hundreds of Web directories where your site can be listed in your category of information. Yahoo, Galaxy, InfoSpace, and the Directory Project are examples of no-cost directories. Industry-specific directories are also vital. In real estate, Allan Bernardi would consider the International Real Estate Digest important.

Portals are becoming more significant since 1998. Every search engine, plus Netscape and Internet Explorer, want to be the "portal" that people use to enter and search the net. They offer free email, chat, and many other services to entice users. You must, therefore, not only submit to the search engine indexing process, but you need to go into their directory sections and submit to the appropriate category. It will sometimes also affect your ranking in the particular search engine.

Linkages with other sites takes time, but is a great broadcast medium for your site. Linking strategies include: intrasite linking, linking within your site to your other pages; intersite linking, linking to other sites chosen according to a predetermined criteria of usefulness; reciprocal linking, trading links with other sites on an equal basis; and banner linking, your banner is found on another Web site and links to yours.

Web news releases sites, sponsorship or banner advertising on high-traffic sites, email marketing, and the use of newsgroups are other ways of getting your information out.

Web site findability finally is a commitment to ongoing promotion, marketing and monthly evaluation using the newest tools of evaluation. The Academy of Web Specialists^TM, other promotion services, or your Web development team can perform this essential activity. Participation in newsgroups and informational web sites and newsletters can keep you abreast of all the developments in the search engines and the newly developing ways to market/promote your site to profitability. Search Engine Update [http://searchenginewatch.com/], the WebPosition Newsletter [http://www.webposition.com/newsletter.html] and the SubmitIt Newsletter [http://www.submit-it.com/newsletter.htm] are all helpful.

An ongoing evaluation of your Web site's position was mentioned earlier as another essential tool. A good statistical package that shows where users came from and where they went within your site is useful. Web Trends, for example, is a program that uses your Internet Service Provider's server log to evaluate your site and provide an HTML document to use on your browser.

Finally, resubmit to the search engines on a monthly basis and update your site regularly with current information or new products. Once you have been found by a user, make sure you keep them by having something there for them to use regularly!

Lastly, don't forget to market your site on your business cards, brochures, stationary, voice mail, newspaper advertising, professional or trade journals, and any other printed communication, advertising or marketing.

Now, what about the allocation of funds to finance a profitable site, if it is truly 25% art and 75% science? For every $2.50 dollars you spend on development and updating, spend $7.50 dollars on findability and ongoing promotion and marketing.

Happy Marketing!

Terry G. Plank, Director of Marketing at the Academy of Web Specialists^TM, and President of Whistler Enterprises, an integrated Web marketing company in Half Moon Bay, California. Whistler Enterprises focuses on Web site evaluation and promotion to measurably increase findability and business effectiveness.