Etan Horowitz

HIGH-POWER SEARCHES
Jason Dowdell helps his clients’ Web sites optimize their potential

Etan Horowitz, Sentinel Staff Writer

CFB; FLORIDA; Cover Story, AIMING FOR THE TOP; Pg. 17

No matter how many times Jason Dowdell explained it, his father-in-law couldn’t grasp what he does for a living.

He’d often sit with his wife’s father at the computer, punch a search term into Google and point to the first result.

“See how this site came to the top?” Dowdell would say. “Well, I make my clients come to the top so that they can make more money.”

Dowdell earned some points with his father-in-law this summer, when one of his clients, an Outer Banks, N.C., vacation-rental company, let him use an eight-bedroom, oceanfront home as a bonus.

He’ll continue to get his pick of Outer Banks houses as long as his client, Twiddy & Co., stays at the top of Web searches for “outer banks vacation rentals” and similar phrases.

Dowdell, a University of Central Florida graduate, is a leader in what’s known as “search- engine optimization,” the behind-the-scenes work that determines which results pop up at the top of a search on Google or Yahoo. With 9.8 billion Internet searches in the U.S. in August, ranking high on a search engine can make or break a company.

Working out of rented space in a Merritt Island insurance company, Dowdell, 33, is playing a big role in shaping the quality and power of Internet searching.

“If you are not found when someone does a search for you by name, God bless you and good luck,” said Greg Jarboe, the spokesman for the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, an industry group with more than 600 members. “Write me when you get work.”

The importance of search engines means guys like Dowdell are in high demand. He routinely turns down clients and plans to add six full-time employees to his three-person company this month.

The search-engine group estimates that $643 million was spent on search-engine optimization in the U.S. and Canada in 2005. That’s only 11 percent of the $5.75 billion that was spent on all forms of search-engine marketing, which includes sponsored links that appear above or beside search results. By 2010, the group estimates that search-engine marketing will be an $11.1 billion industry.

When Dowdell started working with Twiddy in 2005, the rental company didn’t rank in the top 100 sites for any of the key search terms. But after Dowdell helped redesign its Web site, Twiddy’s site traffic exploded. This year, occupancy of the company’s 780 rental homes hit all-time highs.

Dowdell’s company, Labitat, has roughly 10 clients that each pay an average of $20,000 a month. He expects to bring in more than $2 million this year from popular companies such as Yellow Book, The Company Store and the Los Angeles Times, which is owned by the parent company of the Orlando Sentinel.

“Search is the online equivalent of word of mouth,” Dowdell said. “When people see a site that is at the top of Google they inherently trust that site more than one that is on the 10th page of Google.”

It’s equally important, Dowdell said, that the first results that come up are positive and accurately represent what a company is all about. Having an angry blog post appear first in search results can drive customers away.

How it works

Although search-engine optimization may seem complex, Dowdell says three key areas determine a site’s position in the search engine’s ranking: architecture, backlinks and content.

Architecture refers to the way a site is structured. A clean layout will pop up higher in searches than one with complex tables or forms, Dowdell says.

Backlinks are the other Web sites that are linking to that one. The more sites that link to it, the more search engines will consider it to be a trusted and valuable site — and put it higher on the list.

Content means that all keywords, headlines, photos and text on the site should be relevant to the overall topic of the Web site.

‘Black hats’

Some companies employ controversial techniques, known as “black hats” in the industry, to improve a site’s ranking, such as inserting text that is hidden to the reader. Having hidden text of popular keywords like “Paris Hilton” or “iPhone” could improve the site’s ranking, even if the actual content on the site has nothing to do with those terms. That’s why some sites that come up at the top of search results don’t have anything to do with the terms the user searched for.

Google penalizes such sites by reducing their search ranking or removing them from listings altogether, though webmasters can apply for reinclusion to Google.

“It’s not like accounting where there are laws and rules and regulation and generally accepted practices,” Dowdell said. “This is an unregulated industry and there is still a lot of gold in the hills, so everyone is rushing for it.”

Dowdell and others in the industry typically also help companies buy sponsored links, but ranking high in search results is often considered more important because users tend to click on an “organic” link over a sponsored link.

“As people we think of an organic result as a more natural result which is more likely to be what we are searching for,” said Chris Rediske, a Web producer who oversees the Web site of Full Sail Real World Education, a media-production school in Winter Park.

Full Sail has used search-engine optimization to make sure it comes up at the top of searches for terms such as “animation degree,” “music production school” and “audio recording school.”

And search-engine optimization isn’t just for companies or large institutions. More people are employing the techniques to make sure they control the results that come up when an employer or romantic interest searches for their name.

Dowdell likens it to managing your credit score and says people will be forced to understand search-engine optimization. “Search engines are being looked at as this authoritative source and that is only going to continue,” Dowdell said. “What it boils down to is controlling your personal reputation.”

Etan Horowitz can be reached at ehorowitz@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5447