Business owners spent years under pressure to make effective use of the Internet, with many believing they couldn’t be successful without an online presence.

Today, that isn’t enough. Today, close to 90 percent of Internet users make a search engine such as Google their first online destination, making search engine optimization the latest mantra among Web site developers.

“Having a really beautiful Web site with no search engine optimization is like getting a really big, expensive billboard and putting it in the middle of the desert where there are no roads,” said Therese Wielage, vice president of Spindustry Systems Inc.

Search engine optimization – efforts to achieve optimal rankings on the Web’s major search engines – has generated greater attention over the past two to three years as search engines have achieved some commonality and established industry standards regarding optimization strategies. In addition, the number of Web sites has mushroomed from about 650,000 sites in January 1997 to just under 37 million sites in January 2002, according to Hobbes’ Internet Timeline. As of August 2005, the most recent month for which data is available, more than 70 million sites could be found online.

“There’s so much more content and people are using the Web as a resource to find more than they ever have,” said Dale Bentlage, vice president of business development for Ames-based Global Reach Internet Productions. “So the ability to be found is more important than it’s ever been.”

Web site developers today see search engine optimization as a fairly inexpensive yet critical component of the Web development process that takes into account the client’s goals for its Web site – whether it serves as an e-commerce site or simply a virtual storefront to provide consumers with additional information about the business.

The two primary components of optimization are the structure of the Web site, from coding to file placement, and the content, which Brian Hemesath, president of Diligent IS L.L.C., said is the most significant aspect of optimization, particularly as search engines have improved their methods for investigating Web site content.

There is no way for a Web developer to guarantee top search results, Hemesath said, especially when search criteria change weekly or monthly. With new sites being introduced and reoptimized and with search engine companies making frequent changes to their optimization criteria, a business could find itself at No. 2 one day and No. 20 the next.

“You keep learning and try to stay ahead of the game,” he said. “It’s very much a reactionary game.”

The most common optimization strategy is the use of keywords relative to a particular industry. Global Reach examines Web analytics from a particular industry to determine which search phrases are most commonly used and which optimization strategies are working for a client’s competitors. Based on those results, Bentlage said the company can change the text or architecture of a client’s Web site or create pages that would cover more information that would be archived by the search engine.

Stony Creek Inn, a Global Reach client, has stepped up its optimization efforts in the last year by using keywords that pertain to the local hotel and travel industries, according to Sarah Naber, the Johnston hotel’s conference and marketing manager. She often changes text on the hotel’s Web site to add references to upcoming events, such as the Allianz Championship golf tournament, to give the hotel better search results related to those events.

Naber visits Google every one to two weeks and conducts various searches to find where Stony Creek Inn and its competitors land in the search results. If another hotel is listed ahead of Stony Creek Inn, she often examines its Web site to try to determine why it earned a higher ranking, and often makes changes to Stony Creek’s site based on what she finds.

“It’s like a horse race,” Bentlage said. “You have to watch the people behind and in front of you, you have to continually jockey against your competition and you have to analyze people’s search habits.”

Many in the Web industry have also theorized that the number of links to or from a particular site can improve its placement in search results. But in recent years, that theory has been altered based on the understanding that it’s not the number of links that matter, but then number of links with relevance to that particular Web site. The Greater Des Moines Convention and Visitors Bureau has a link from its Web site to Stony Creek Inn, which can improve the hotel’s search engine placement. Still, Myers said that is a much bigger, much harder battle to win.

As optimization strategies have improved, so, too, have the abilities of search engines to evaluate Web site content and its relevance to a particular subject. Some search engines have become ruthless in their enforcement of certain optimization standards.

“Tricks people used five years ago, if people used those today, the search engine would probably punish them and reduce their ranking because they were doing something to trick them,” Bentlage said. “People try to trick search engines, but search engines try to get smarter and smarter so they can’t be tricked,” making well-written content even more important.

According to BBC News, BMW was recently blacklisted by Google for liberally sprinkling keywords throughout its text-heavy pages in order to influence search results related to “used car.” Google conducted an investigation and subsequently reduced the automaker’s page rank to zero, ensuring it no longer appears at the top of the search engine’s results.