Site Promotion and Optimization

IBS offers comprehensive web site optimization and promotion plans and has developed proven methods for all the major search engines and directories to help maximize your web site's exposure.

The Internet has brought about an undeniable shift in how business is conducted. Unlimited information, instantaneous communication and a market more vast than anything before have become available to both large corporations and small home businesses. However, one underlying factor remains the same - advertising. While traditional business plans have always included extensive advertising budgets, the same cannot be said about many Internet businesses.

Search engine usage has increased exponentially. New figures released by Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore recently show search engine usage is growing well above expectations:

• 90% of all Internet users are using search engines.
• Daily search engine usage has jumped from 31% (June 05) to 41% (Sept 05)
• 59 million search users a day in Sept 2005 (up 55% from June 2004)

According to comScore statistics, search engine rankings and unique visitors for October 2005 were:

• Google - 89.9 million unique visitors
• Yahoo! - 68 million unique visitors
• MSN - 49.7 million unique visitors
• Ask Jeeves - 43.7 million unique visitors
• AOL Search - 36.1 million unique visitors

While Google maintains the number one position, the overall numbers suggest a promotion and optimization plan across the three major search engines would be integral for success in today's competitive online marketplace.

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of boosting and maintaining your website’s position in the results that Internet users see when they run queries on different search engines. As you probably know by now, merely being listed in a search index is not enough to bring new visitors to your website. Your website must rank at or near the top of the search results in order to collect all the traffic that search engines can produce. Keywords and Meta Tags are only part of the equation.

If you think that targeting an Internet-based audience would be more effective at driving traffic to a website, you are correct. Banner ads and mass-mailings are much less expensive than radio or television advertising. However, they do have their limitations. While remarkably cheaper than a TV spot, a small banner ad on a major portal website can still cost several thousand dollars a month and may not be the most cost effective way to bring visitors to a website.

In addition, many potential customers see banners as a nuisance. Mass e-mailing to a targeted audience has similar drawbacks and we all know that e-mailing a non-targeted or unknown audience is nothing but spam. Another disadvantage that banner ads and mass-mailings have is they are not as targeted as well-optimized search terms. They may reach a wide audience, but most of that audience will delete your expensive ad before having the opportunity to realize that you are exactly what they're looking for.