For years, almost anyone involved with the promotion of their
website, be it for commercial or other purposes, has come to
either love, or hate, search engines. Whether it is Yahoo,
Google, MSN, Ask Jeeves, or one of the literally thousands of
smaller search engines and directories, website owners have
known that by “optimizing” their site for search engines, they
could hope to rise to the top ranks of a leading search engine
when an applicable keyword or phrase was entered in the search
engine by a user.
Back in 1997, when I started a small retail website that sells
antique maps, http://www.vintagemaps.com , all it took to get
indexed in the Yahoo directory was a free submission. My site
was dutifully submitted, and within four weeks it was #1 for its
most important keyword phrase, and it remained in Yahoo’s top 10
for at least a year. Today, by contrast, it would cost $299 to
even submit a commerical site to the Yahoo directory, and there
is no guarantee that it will even be indexed!
The world has changed. For observers of the search engine
phenomenon, it was only a matter of time before the free ride
was over. How could it be otherwise? For years, website owners
such as myself had been enjoying vast, and free publicity,
courtesy of various search engines and directories. It could not
last forever. First came search engine optimization, whereby
savvy website owners hired specialists to “tweak” their sites to
get better placement on the search engines. As soon as the
search engines saw dollars being pumped into search, they began
setting up their own payment models, including “pay-per-click”
methods that allow an advertiser to display a small ad, adjacent
to the free search results, tied to specific keywords.
2004 is turning out to be the year when the free ride is looking
like an endangered species. Everyone is getting into the act:
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Verizon, and more. The phone company
“Yellow Pages” people are growing their internet presence, and
all these companies are searching for just the right mix of
keyword/pay-per-click/paid directory listing model. Already, the
paid options for website promotion far outnumber the
old-fashioned search engine placement. Where it will end is
anyone’s guess. But what’s for sure is that the free ride is
nearly over. Exposure on the Internet, like exposure in the rest
of the media, has become a commodity. In the future, many ways
of promoting a webiste will resemble advertising models familiar
from the non-Internet world. To garner promotional exposure, the
website owner will need to expend more resources than ever.
Whether the resources are supplied personally by the website
owner, or by hired specialists, does not really matter. The new
reality is that promotion on the Internet is already looking a
lot like promotion everywhere else in the world. Vital, and
valuable.
About the author:
Neil Street is co-founder of Small Business Online, based in
Wilton, CT., a website design, management, and promotion company
dedicated to the Internet needs of the small business. His
website is at http://www.smallbusinessonline.net Send email to
neil@smallbusinessonline.net He can also be reached at
(203)761-7992
