BY JEFFERSON GRAHAM
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
YAFFA BALSAM WAS mystified.
Why did so many other family therapy Web sites pop to the top of Google search results listings, while her site was nowhere to be found?
It's a question posed by thousands of small-business owners every day as they seek new customers online rather than through traditional Yellow Pages directories. These days, if a company Web site can't be found on Google, it basically doesn't exist.
"I've had my Web site up for a year, and as far as I know, I haven't found one new client from the Internet," says Balsam, 50, of Los Alamitos, Calif. "I want that to change."
USA Today asked Chris Winfield, president of Web site consultant 10e20, to look at Balsam's site, yourheartfeltsolutions.com, identify its weaknesses and offer tips on how to improve her rankings. His recommendations are instrumental for anyone with a Web site, as they are universal.
Winfield has three top tips for Balsam: Her site needs to be linked from other quality Web sites. She should have a clear Web site title. And she needs descriptive copy that includes the search terms (called keywords) that articulate how she wants to be discovered by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, he says.
"Keywords direct the search engines to how to find you," Winfield says. "And links are the holy grail. If a lot of sites link to you, that means you have authority and should be placed higher than others."
Balsam's front page was virtually devoid of text, beyond tabs for inside pages and contact information. Winfield says this is a huge no-no. Google's spider crawls the Internet compiling Web site information, looking to keywords on the page for how to reference the site.
In his analysis, Winfield wrote: "Add some good, descriptive text about you and your services that gently incorporates the one- or two-keyword phrases that you are concentrating on. For example: "Family therapy specialist in Orange & Los Angeles County — Yaffa Balsam MFT."
Winfield is what's known in the industry as a search-engine optimizer, or SEO. He helps small to midsize firms with their search-engine visibility. The tricks and tools to get sites to the top on Google and competitors Yahoo and MSN change daily. SEOs promise to do the work, while you run your business.
Winfield says most SEOs charge anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 monthly, doing everything from designing and redesigning sites to writing daily blog posts for clients.
The first step for many businesses is realizing exactly what their keywords should be. A house painter, for example, shouldn't use "house painting" as a keyword, because it's so broad. Instead, the painter might drill down to the more specific "interior house painting" or "exterior house painting."
Winfield directed Balsam to a free tool Google offers for keyword tips — https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. There, USA Today typed in Balsam's "Family Therapy" keyword, and found many variations, including "family therapist," "family marriage therapy" and "family therapy counseling."
These online keyword tools help Google's advertising clients, who buy sponsored pay-per-click links to guarantee good placement in the search results. But they are available, free, to everyone.
Many businesses also look to pay-per-click advertising to augment their Web exposure. Paying Google or other search engines helps assure that your business will be near the top of the sponsored listings. Advertising is also a great way to figure out which keywords potential clients are using to find you, Winfield says. Both Google and rival Yahoo offer tools to show which ads were clicked.
In designing a Web site, Winfield says, the most important keyword for a business should be on the site's title page (visible along the top of Internet Explorer or other web browsers). This is the first thing Google looks for when crawling the Web.
