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 businesss 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 thats 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 Bings search engine. Most people dont 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 Mikeys gyros, Moscows Bagel and Deli, and Maialina Pizzeria
Napoletana. Of these three restaurants I could only get ahold of Mikeys Gyros and Moscows
Bagel and Deli, both of whom agreed to give me an interview. I was never able to get in contact
with the owners at Maialinas, 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 sites 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 Eildes [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 ones 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 owners 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. Googles AdWords is the
main source of the companys 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 Mikeys Gyros:
We still dont have a website, but our store showed up on Googles 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. Im not sure the exact number but our customer base did
increase.
Didnt want to say
Interview Answers for Moscow Bagel and Deli:
We started our website around the same time as our store.
I dont 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.
Its 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.
Didnt 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 Mikeys 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. Mikeys 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 didnt 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 Mikeys 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 Mikeys 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 Mikeys Gyros customer base was similar to the
Moscow Bagel Shops, 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 Mikeys 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
ones 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 owners 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 ones website without one having to do anything except have
a web presence or a website. In the past few years Googles 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 Mikeys 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

1. Beel , J., Gipp, B., & Eilde, E. (2010). Academic search engine optimization. Journal of
Scholarly Publishing, 41(2), 176-190. Retrieved
fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=34&sid=a77b24ae-9683-4ac5-
9a3bd856ce5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl

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=a77b24ae96834ac59a3bd856c
e5408c2@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1za
XRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl

4. Dick, M. (2011). Search engine optimization in uk news production. Journalism Practice,
5(4), 462-477. Retrieved
fromhttp://ida.lib.uidaho.edu:3304/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=846f2e37-117e-42e6-b759-
de3157c227aa@sessionmgr112&hid=114&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29w
ZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZ
zY29wZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29w
ZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29w
ZT1zaXRl

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=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY
29wZT1zaXRl