Has your Web site been found lately? Or, have the twists and turns in search engine marketing placed you toward the bottom of search engine lists?

Internet users find sites which suit their interest through search engines, online tools such as Google and Yahoo which provided indexes to billions of Web pages. Type in a few word related to your topic, and up pops a listing of hundreds – if not thousands – of sites. As search engine specialists, IdeaStars job is to make sure its clients’ sites are at the top of the lists, where they will be found.

With that in mind, IdeaStar’s President Jim Fisher, Vice President of Development Services Wayne Largent and Project Manager Paul Breitzmann recently attended the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago to make sure IdeaStar customers – current and future – remain at the top of the lists. After all, what good is a beautifully designed Web site if nobody finds it?

Paul concentrated on optimizing sites for organic traffic, and on the technical aspects of search engine advertising. With experience in search engine marketing, Paul will be filling in while IdeaStar search engine specialist Susanne Svette is on maternity leave.

“It’s good to be brought up to date,” Paul said. “The search engines are constantly changing how sites are indexed, and something as simple as word placement can have an effect on a site’s ranking. ”

Jim and Wayne concentrated on marketing through search engine techniques. “We attended a similar search engine marketing conference this summer. There have already been a lot of changes. It’s amazing how the industry keeps re-inventing itself,” Jim said. “I can’t wait to start applying what we’ve learned for our clients.”

Of special interest was the use of blogs to increase ranking. Defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer,” blogs can provide links to and relevant information for your site – something the search engines love. “We will be finding more ways to integrate this technology in the upcoming year,” Jim said.

IdeaStar is an established leader in the area of search engine marketing. The conference re-enforced what we already do right, and highlighted what we need to improve upon.

Areas covered during the conference include:

• how search engines list Web sites for free and through paid placements
  
• how to get free “organic” traffic by building a site that pleases search engines and your visitors
  
• how to efficiently purchase listings guaranteed to rank your company at the top of search engine results.
  
• how to calculate the ROI of your search marketing efforts by tracking your visitors from the time they hit your site until they buy, and get tips on improving conversion if they don’t!
  
• how to build links that generate traffic to your Web site, and how to avoid the penalties of “spamming” the search engines
  
• what’s coming next in the constantly evolving world of Web search, and how you can profit from those changes

This entry was posted on Friday, December 17, 2004 at 10:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.