Kyle Hanson

Professor Aaron Schab

Technical Writing

A New Age of Marketing and its Effects on Business

Abstract

This paper will explore search engine optimization and its effect on businesses. Specifically I

want to figure out if search engine optimization can improve the profits of local businesses in

Moscow. After conducting searches for numerous secondary sources and interviewing two, local

Moscow businesses I feel that I have come a long way in answering this question. The sources I

have found support the claim that search engine optimization increases traffic flow to websites.

If a small business around Moscow employed search engine optimization to their businesses,

more people locally would hear about them. One source I found claimed that optimizing their

website led to an increase of nearly 450 viewers a month. If a business’s website could convert

just ten percent of those viewers into customers that would be an increase of forty five customers

monthly and 540 customers yearly. Depending on the type of business this could see a definite

increase in revenue. A sandwich shop that employed search optimization for instance might sell

a sandwich at a price of five dollars. Multiply this by 540 and that’s nearly $2700 of profit

yearly. Search engine optimization can be done by oneself, with just a little time investment, so

almost all of this money would be profit, not just revenue. This research has shown that the

small business can gain a substantial revenue increase with the application of search engine

optimization to a website.

Introduction

In the last five to ten years, there has been a major shift in the ways small businesses market their

products. Instead of relying on old-fashioned marketing techniques such as cold calling or

advertising around town, the advent of search engine optimization has made it possible for small

businesses to compete with larger companies [5]. Search engine optimization is the process in

which a website employs signals, and ranking factors such as keywords to improve their rank

with Google or Bing [7, 1, and 10]. If done properly search engine optimization can land a

business within the first ten to twenty results when a searched word or phrase is entered into

Google or Bing’s search engine. Most people don’t read past the first three pages of a search

result [10], so when a business is within that range traffic to individual websites is significantly

increased. In what follows I will use juried articles that discuss the many aspects of search

engine marketing and interviews with small business owners in Moscow to show the advantages

of optimizing a web site for search engines. Search engine marketing is defined in this paper as

any sort of marketing such as pay per click, Google AdWords, and search engine optimization

that markets a business to a consumer. The articles I will use include information about different

ways to optimize a website, common concerns for people who may be new to the idea of search

engine marketing, and what the costs and benefits of search engine marketing can be for a

business owner who employs search engine optimization correctly. I will start with the

methodology I used in obtaining my data from primary sources and what criteria I used to choose

the articles I have cited. I will then display the data I have collected in its unaltered form, and

will analyze the data afterwards to make sense of how it pertains to search engine optimization

and the small business owner. At the end of this paper I will explain why small business owners

should take search engine optimization into consideration when planning their business. I

propose that by the end of this paper readers will understand whether or not search engine

marketing can increase revenue for small businesses in Moscow and why search engine

optimization should be one of the first ways business owners should look to increase profit after

opening their business. Furthermore, I will explain what problems I ran into during my research,

and how I would change my research methods if I were to do this study again at a different time.

Methodology and Methodological Problems

If this experiment was done again, I would have liked to create a website for a small business in

Moscow that had not started one and try to optimize the search engine. After studying the traffic

on the site, and watching a corresponding increase or decrease in sales, this method would have

been ideal for gaining raw data. I had to complete this project within a semester however, and I

felt like a longer period of time would have been necessary to start a website, optimize it for a

search engine, and collect this data. When deciding who to interview, and which businesses to

study in this paper I limited myself, therefore, to those businesses who already had a web

presence. That is, businesses that showed up on a Google search for food in Moscow. This was

because those business owners would be able to tell me exactly how much sales increased after a

website was created and optimized for search engines. Additionally, the businesses I

interviewed needed to be small businesses or startups that were only found in Moscow. I

excluded large corporations such as Wal-Mart because they already have an established brand, a

web presence, and a website that has been optimized for search engines. Also, Wal-Mart has

billions of dollars and many workers to optimize their business. The idea behind my study was

to see if revenue could be produced without spending a lot of money and if search engine

optimization could be done by a company owner. Three of the small businesses in Moscow that

met my criteria were Mikey’s gyros, Moscow’s Bagel and Deli, and Maialina Pizzeria

Napoletana. Of these three restaurants I could only get ahold of Mikey’s Gyros and Moscow’s

Bagel and Deli, both of whom agreed to give me an interview. I was never able to get in contact

with the owners at Maialina’s, so I chose to leave them out of this study. If repeating this study,

a larger sample size would be ideal. My interview questions will be found in the data section of

this paper.

In order to supplement my primary sources I have also used juried articles of businesses and

industries that have benefitted from search engine optimization, as well as studies that show how

many people use search engines today. These will serve to strengthen my sample size and give

an in depth look at the time and cost expenditure by certain small businesses.

There are multiple counterarguments concerning search engine optimization, and practices that

should be avoided when optimizing a website for a search engine. The practices that one should

avoid while optimizing his or her search engine are “black hat techniques” [10]. This paper does

not condone or encourage the use of these techniques. In addition, Ross A. Malaga states that

using these techniques often results in that website and their clients being banned from a search

engine such as Google or Bing. This list of techniques and terms, as found in “Worst Practices

in Search Engine Optimization” by Ross A. Malaga, are listed below so that the small business

owner can recognize and avoid them while starting a website him or herself or if he or she

outsources the project to someone else.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

o Methods aimed at manipulating a Web site and links to a web site for the purpose

of improving the site’s ranking on the search engine results pages.

Black hat indexing

o Blog-ping (BP)

– A method for attracting search engine spiders that involves the creation

of hundreds (or even thousands) of Blogs and then continuously pinging

Blog servers (telling the servers that the Blog has been updated).

o Bowling

Techniques used to cause competitors to receive a search engine penalty

or ban.

o Cloaking

A technique that shows one set of Web pages to search engines and

another set to humans.

o Content generator

Software that searches the Web for specified content and then copies that

content into a new web page.

o Doorway pages

A set of web pages, each of which is optimized for a particular keyword.

Each page redirects users to a web page designed for humans.

o HTML injection

Occurs when a user exploits security vulnerability in Web site search

programs, by sending the program a search string which contains special

HTML characters. These characters cause the insertion of data specified

by the user into the site.

o Meta refresh

An HTML meta tag used to redirect users to a different web page after a

certain amount of time. A fast meta refresh redirects the user with no time

delay.

o Meta tag

HTML tags placed in the header section of a Web page that provides that

provides metadata about the page [10].

Two counterarguments many people have against search engine optimization are that it will lead

to spam and tweaking. Beel, Gipp, and Eilde’s [1] article primarily discusses the practices of

academic search engine optimization, but in the first section of their paper Beel et al. note that

search engine optimization is common procedure for websites and that “SEO involves creating

or modifying a Web site in a way that makes it ‘easier for search engines to both crawl and index

[its] con-tent.’ They acknowledge the above counterarguments as true, but not significant. Beel

et al. claim that search engines such as Google or Bing actually publish guidelines for how to

optimize a website, and that any website that does not follow these guidelines will not be ranked

very high or at all [1, 10]. While these guidelines and regulations do not completely stop

spammers or the users of the above black hat techniques, they should act as a consolation for

new website owners. Black hat websites, and website spam may temporarily lower one’s rank

on a search engine website, but most of these websites are removed within a short period of time.

Another source of confusion for many small business owners wishing to put their businesses on

the internet revolves around trademark and franchise laws. These are legitimate concerns for a

new business. No business owner wants to get involved in a lawsuit, but as Alexander Tuneski

[13] describes, “In the United States, Google does not consider it infringement for a third-party

advertiser to purchase trademarks as keyword triggers and will only investigate the use of

trademarks in the text of advertisements on its network” (halfway down, no page numbers). This

means that there will not be any issues as far as the small business owner is concerned with the

use of keywords when optimizing a website for search engines. Of course, any material taken

from a competing website and used in the content of a business owner’s website can be

considered trademark abuse. Any lawsuits that websites bring for a violation of trademarked

keywords are dealt with by Google and not the owner of the offending website.

The Secondary Source Data

Trade press reports suggest that nearly 80% to 90% of all website traffic originates on generic

search sites such as search engines and directories. The use of search engines on any typical day

in the United States has increased from 49% in 2002 to 69% in 2008 (adapted from Beladona,

Lin, and Chen) [2].

An overwhelming majority of users search for information about goods and services on a regular

basis and more than half of internet traffic begins with a search engine [5].

Dick states [4] “Google claims to use over 200 ‘‘signals’’ in addition to their patented PageRank

algorithm, in order to determine the ranking of Web pages. But beyond providing general

guidance and support on how to optimize for search, Google is evasive both on what these

‘‘signals’’ are, and on how they are weighted in ranking. The lack of transparency around this

issue stems from a fear of giving Web publishers free reign to ‘‘game’’ the search engine ranking

system” (p. 2).

Tuneski claims that there is an ever increasing demand for internet advertising, and that the

internet users in America saw nearly 5 trillion display ads in 2010. Google’s AdWords is the

main source of the company’s revenue and in 2011 AdWords accounted for nearly $30 billion

[12].

“In a 2005 survey of members of the STC Consulting and Independent Contracting SIG, only

22% of respondents to a question about marketing methods responded that publishing a Web site

was not applicable to them, suggesting that the other 78% had indeed gone through the effort and

expense of creating and maintaining a business site These 78% rated their Web site as among

their more useful marketing tools” (Killoran, p. 2-3) [8].

Greene, Griffin, Whittle, Williams, Howard, and Anderson have done a study on Horsequest, an

online resource for free equine related topics. They have employed search engine optimization

in building their website, www.extension.com. The study performed by Green et al. showed that

“From the official public launch (February 2008), Google Analytics data indicate customers

access eXtension content via several methods with 78% entering the site by searching (e.g.,

Google, Yahoo) for answers to their questions, 13% coming from referring sites that link to

eXtension content, and 9% of users come directly to the site by typing the Internet address or

accessing their bookmarks” (p. 4) [6].

Sen [11] claims that in 2003 only around 12% of what, at the time, was a $7 billion dollar search

engine marketing industry went into funding for search engine optimization. He goes on to say

that while the majority of businesses invest in AdWord campaigns and pay per click advertising,

an empirical study showed that nearly “60-80% of search engine users (clicked) on displays in

the editorial section when conduction online research whereas only 14-40% (clicked) on

sponsored links” (p. 4).

Data from Primary Sources

Interview Questions:

How long after your business started was it until you had a web page or web presence?

Have you heard of search engine optimization?

If yes, did you use search engine optimization when you built your website?

How much time did it take to build your website or web presence?

How much did it cost to build your website or web presence?

What increase in store traffic and revenue, if any did you see after you had a website or

web presence?

Are you able to tell me how much you make each year?

Interview Answers for Mikey’s Gyros:

“We still don’t have a website, but our store showed up on Google’s results about a year

after we opened.”

“Search engine what?”

N/A

N/A

N/A

“Once our store could be found on Google, we probably saw a 10-15% increase in traffic

and revenue to the store. I’m not sure the exact number but our customer base did

increase.”

Didn’t want to say

Interview Answers for Moscow Bagel and Deli:

“We started our website around the same time as our store.”

“I don’t think so.”

N/A

“It only costs around $10 to get domain name for a website, and we actually got it

running and functional in a weekend.”

“It’s hard to say if there was an increase in revenue or traffic due to the website since we

put it up around the same time as the store opened.”

Didn’t want to say

Limitations

Clearly there were limitations in the primary source data that was used for this project. Only two

small businesses around Moscow agreed to be interviewed, and this severely limited the sample

size. Also, neither of these two businesses had heard of or employed search engine optimization

in their marketing plan. The owner at Mikey’s Gyros was able to give me a rough estimate of

increased traffic and revenue, but nothing concrete. The Moscow Bagel shop had a website, but

from a quick Google search of foods in Moscow and from my interview, it was clear that the

website had never been optimized for Google. While their website has had over 18,000 visitors,

it was impossible from this study to tell whether or not those visitors became new customers or

simply visited the site after hearing about the business from another source. If doing this

experiment again, one may want to find a business without a website, create a website for that

business, optimize that website for search engines, and then calculate whether the time and

monetary investment was worth the increased traffic. This could be done by setting up a counter

on the site for how many total visitors the site brought in. After this one could simply ask the

customers to fill out a quick yes or no check box when they ordered, saying whether or not they

found out about the store from the website or a different means.

Analysis

Although the primary data was limited with two sources, if one looks at this data through the lens

of the secondary sources in this paper, he or she will begin to see a correlation between a search

engines optimized website and significant traffic increase for a small business. Reading through

the work of Beladona et al. it is apparent that the number of people within the United States who

use search engines has increased dramatically; 49% of users in 2002 increased to nearly 69% in

2008, and the numbers are still growing [2]. With a majority of people using these sites to look

up goods and services [5], one of the most prevalent searches in the Palouse area is a search for

Moscow foods, places to eat in Moscow, or restaurants in Moscow. Mikey’s Gyros has been

able to tell a difference even though they did not create an internet presence or optimize a

website to be within the top few pages of search engine results. They didn’t have to do anything

as a business to create their web presence, yet if one searches for food in Moscow and clicks on

one of the top three results he or she will find Mikey’s Gyros near the top of many of the “best

places to eat in Moscow” lists. In fact, when asked to estimate an increase in traffic or revenue

after they were mentioned on these other websites, an increase of 10-15% was assumed. The

Moscow Bagel Shop was harder to analyze because they created their website at around the same

time as they opened the store. Both of the businesses I interviewed declined to say how much

they made per year, but judging from the number of visitors on moscowbagel.com one can draw

some reasonable conclusions. If for instance, it is assumed that Mikey’s Gyros and the Moscow

Bagel Shop have a similar number of customers each year, and from moscowbagel.com one can

see that the total number of visitors since the sites creation has been around 18,000, he or she can

extrapolate a 10-15% increase. Assuming that Mikey’s Gyros customer base was similar to the

Moscow Bagel Shop’s, at 18,000 visitors before any web presence, and after a web presence on

Google they saw a 10% increase in visitors to the store, they would have an additional 1,800

customers per year. If Mikey’s sold a $4.00 gyro to each of these additional customers they

would make an extra $7200 a year. Considering that this increase was with very limited work on

the part of the business, it would benefit any small business to build a web presence. John

Killoran makes this same point and encourages businesses to create a web site saying that “78%

(of people in a 2005 survey) rated their website as among their more useful marketing tools”

(Killoran, p. 2-3) [8]. With 60-80% of users clicking finding a website on Google search pages

rather than through paid advertising, it makes more sense than ever to invest in search engine

optimization [12]. Take the study Horsequest, conducted by Green et al. [6], for example,

wherein the company built a search engine optimized website www.extension.com. In their

study Green et al. showed that 78% of traffic came from searches on Yahoo or Google, the rest

coming in from paid advertising. Some people may claim that it is necessary to hire someone to

do search engine optimization. This is not true at all. There are plenty of resources online that

enable one to learn search optimization and many of these are accessible online; they just take a

quick Google search to find. Examples of these websites can be found on

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/free-seo-resources/15336/. There are also countless books

that cost less than $30 dollars These three, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies, SEO 2013

& Beyond: Search engine optimization will never be the same again, and Search Engine

Optimization (SEO): An Hour a Day are the first three books available when typing in search

engine optimization at amazon.com. With such resources it is cheap and relatively time efficient

to learn search engine optimization oneself. Finally there is evidence, given by Dou et al. [5],

that creating a website that ranks high on one of the major search engines is a good way to brand

one’s product. In fact the authors go on to say that “our research sheds more light on the

importance of search engine optimization efforts by lesser-known brands (than any others).”This

means small businesses have an even higher payout if they invest the time and money it takes to

learn search engine optimization. There is no need to outsource this task, and with the sort of

numbers that an increase of just 10% can provide for the small business owner, there is every

reason for small businesses to create websites for his or her company and work to optimize it for

major search engines.

Discussion

Some of the ways websites generate traffic to their websites were covered in articles by John

Kruger and Scott bush. They show small business owners how they should put up a website for

the business they start, and they are based on the principles of expertise and location [3, 9].

Kruger [9] describes expertise as being any of the inbound links to a website. For instance, if a

blog post were to mention a business owner’s site on his or her blog, this would make the

business owner seem more reputable in the eyes of major search engines who would

consequently raise their websites rank. The more of these inbound links an owner has directing

people to his or her site, the more credibility he or she garners with search engines. This is a

free, simple way business owners can practice search engine optimization with no monetary cost,

and at the time expense of replying to a relevant blog post and putting their website in the

response. The second principle location is discussed by both Kruger and Buresh and is one of

the most convincing reasons for the small business owner to put together a website for his or her

business. This principle works for one’s website without one having to do anything except have

a web presence or a website. In the past few years Google’s results have focused on becoming

more and more local, meaning that when a person types in a search term or phrase on a major

search engine, that person will be directed first to the websites that are closest to his or her area

[3, 9]. As seen above in the case with Mikey’s Gyros, the Greek restaurant had no website, but

the fact that they were online at all means that people in the Moscow area were almost

immediately given information about them. The information in this paper is best suited for the

small business owner. The study aims at local Moscow businesses in an attempt to convince

small business owners to create a website for their business and use search engine optimization

to increase traffic flow first to the website, and then to the locally run store. While I only used

local Moscow businesses in my primary research however, this information should make every

small business owner want to use search engine optimization. The cost to benefit ratio itself is

an indicator that the small business should invest in a website that has been search optimized.

Companies could increase their revenue by up to 10%, and because using search engine

optimization acts as a branding tool for many small businesses, it is a way that business owners

can gain respect and recognition within local communities. Continued research is needed to

conclusively say that search engine optimization will help small businesses increase traffic and

revenue to their stores or restaurants, but the source evidence in this paper coupled with primary

interviews will make any business owner realize that the low cost of implementing search engine

optimization into his or her marketing strategy can produce major rewards.

Works Cited

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2. Beldona , S., Lin, K., & Chen, M. (2012). Hotel trademarks in organic search: A longitudinal cross-national study. Journal of Travel Research, 51(2), 227-238. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=6&sid=a77b24ae96834ac59a3bd856ce5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

3. Buresh, S. (2010). Search trends: Going local, going mobile. Public Relations Tactics,17(8), 10. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=13&sid=a77b24ae-9683-4ac5-9a3bd856ce5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

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5. Dou, W., Lim, K., Su, C., Zhou, N., & Cui, N. (2010). Brand positioning strategy using search engine marketing. MIS Quarterly, 34(2), 261-A4. Retrieved fromhttp://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=11&sid=5b19e695-a3a7-4542-a89cdbed63283eec@sessionmgr112&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

6. Greene, E., Griffin, A., Whittle, J., Williams, C., Howard, A., & Anderson, K. (2010).Development and usage of extension. Journal of Animal Science, 88(8), 2829-2837. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=6&sid=a77b24ae-9683-4ac5-9a3bd856ce5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

7. Heiler, C. (2012). How-to understand seo. Landscape Management, 51 (10), 26-29. Retrieved from http://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?sid=846f2e37-117e-42e6-b759-de3157c227aa@sessionmgr112&vid=5&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

8. Killoran, J. (2010). Writing for robots: Search engine optimization of technical communication business web sites. Technical Communication, 57(2), 161-181. retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=11&sid=5b19e695-a3a7-4542-a89cdbed63283eec@sessionmgr112&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

9. Kruger, J. M. (2012). Get found! search engine optimization demystified. GPSolo, 29(3), 50-53. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=846f2e37-117e-42e6-b759-de3157c227aa@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

10. Malaga, R. (2008). Worst practices in search engine optimization. Communications of the ACM, 51(12), 147-150. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=846f2e37-117e-42e6-b759-de3157c227aa@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl

11. Sen, R. (2005). Optimal search engine marketing strategy.International Journal of Electronic Commerce, 10(1), 9-25. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3860/stable/27751172?&Search=yes&searchText=engine&

12. Tuneski, A. (2012). Hey, that's my name! trademark usage on the internet.Franchise Law Journal, 31(4), 203-214. Retrieved fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=13&sid=a77b24ae-9683-4ac5-9a3bd856ce5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl