HOW TO BOOST SEARCH ENGINE TRAFFIC.

"Virtually everyone begins their Web browsing at one of the ten major search engines," says online marketing consultant Fred Marckini. "A top ranking in a major search engine such as Yahoo!, Lycos, or Alta Vista will often generate more targeted traffic than an expensive banner campaign--and a good search engine position is free."

Yet surprisingly few Web sites--and Web stores--fully exploit the traffic-building potential of search engine referrals, Marckini points out. Many site developers don't even include basic HTML keywords; others never submit site information to the top search engines, or else hide essential information in parts of the site that indexing robots can't read. Result: Competing sites get higher relevancy scores--and first shot at potential customers.

Marckini admits that getting into the very highest levels of search engine rankings can involve some fairly technical tricks; in fact, he's written a 114-page book on the subject ("Achieving Top 10 Rankings in Internet Search Engines"). But Marckini also says there are several simple principles that can dramatically enhance a site's search engine scores--and traffic:

*Check out the competition: A good starting point for optimizing a site's ranking is to "analyze the pages of those who rank higher than you," Marckini says. Competitors may have figured out better keywords, or they may have positioned critical HTML elements differently. (For example, several HTML authoring tools automatically place <TITLE> tags in a subordinant position that "could hurt your ranking," he says.) "The trick to always being on top is to learn which variables can be influenced."

*Build multiple doorway pages: Most search engines assign higher scores to single-theme pages and give lower scores to pages that contain relatively complex content, such as descriptions of a company's whole product line. One solution, says Marckini, is to set up product-specific or keyword-specific "doorway" pages that link back to the main site. "In the same way, you can create doorway pages to take advantage of a specific search engine's ranking criteria," he adds.

*Select "power combo" keywords: Rather than compete for attention using generic keywords like "software" or "finance," Marckini suggests, it's better to look for "power combos"--sets of keywords that customers are likely to use when they narrow their searches. "If you conduct a search on the keyword 'software,' Yahoo! returns 22,934 matches," he says. "But if you search for 'utility software,' Yahoo! returns only 825 site matches. You have at least a fighting chance of getting to the top of the 'utility software' result set."

*List alternate spellings: If there's a possibility that an important keyword will be misspelled, Marckini suggests, the "not quite right spellings" should also be listed with the site's meta tags. It's especially important to offer alternative spellings for proper names, he adds. "How do you spell the infamous intern Monica's last name? Lewinski? Lewinsky? Leuinsky?" he asks.

*Avoid page frames: "While frames make Web site navigation a bit easier, they wreak havoc on your Web site's search engine ranking," Marckini notes. Many of the major search engines can't read text within frames, and may even post garbled summaries in listings of search results. One solution: Design an alternate version of the site without frames, with keywords and text that the search engines can read.

*Treat Yahoo! as a special case: "Yahoo! is simply the most important search service on the Web," Marckini points out. It generates five times as much traffic as its nearest competitor, and its editors are highly selective about which pages they add to the Yahoo! directory. "Yahoo! category editors have no obligation to list your site," Marckini notes; they may reject sites that "appear to be gaming their system" or that contain an "under construction" graphic.

*Keep checking the rankings: "From time to time, search engines change their scoring systems and stop rewarding certain techniques that gave you an advantage just days before," says Marckini. So it's important to constantly monitor a site's rankings on all the major search engines and re-optimize pages whose rankings have slipped. (FirstPlace Software's WebPosition Gold automates this process, he notes; a trial copy can be downloaded from www.webposition.com.) "Improving your positions is not instantaneous--it's a process," says Marckini.

Frederick Marckini, president, Response Direct, 413 Boston Post Rd., Weston, Mass. 02193; 781/891-7631. E-mail: [e-mail].