Sewing Up the online market

Miriam Ellis, a Kenwood resident and Web designer, has a lesson anyone can appreciate: how to make money from a rainy-day project.

It's a cash recipe for hobbyists and small-business owners. It combines a niche product with a Web site designed to rank high in a Google search. Plus it throws in direct marketing to bloggers who help create online buzz and generate traffic to the Web site.

To explain how it all comes together is the tale of a 50-year-old Mexican dress. It was brought back from Oaxaca by Ellis' uncle in the 1960s. Over the decades the family heirloom became thread-worn from regular use.

Ellis, an avid sewer, went online to find a pattern to make a new one. But she couldn't find one. So she did the next best thing: She reverse engineered her dress.

In April, she took it apart piece by piece and created a diagram of how it was put together. She then drew up instructions on how others could make a similar dress.

"I discovered it was made out of five rectangles," she said. "And you can't believe how easy that was to sew."

Then Ellis, who owns Solas Web Design with her husband, shifted from her hobby to her profession. She designed a Web site where people could download a digital copy of the pattern for $5. In less than six months, she has sold about 250 patterns, generating $1,250.

"And it can stay up on the Web for years, with the only cost being the price of hosting the Web site," Ellis said. "The only thing I have to do is write 'you're welcome' notes for people who are thanking me."

Design

Ellis did several things correctly in designing her Web site, said Jamie Low, a marketing consultant who specializes in optimizing online search results.

Her site isn't flashy, and it doesn't need to be, Low said. It is simply a Web site selling a pattern for a Mexican dress, and it has what Low called an immediate call to action: A large button to click and download the pattern for $5 right on the home page.

And perhaps most importantly, www.TheMexicanDress.com is among the top three results on Google when typing in "Mexican dress" or "Mexican dress pattern."

Search engine optimization

Ellis' site was built from the ground up to increase its ranking with search engines.

More than looking pretty, a good Web site provides relevant information such as keywords and text to "Web crawlers," say both Ellis and Low. Search companies such as Google and Yahoo use crawlers to index practically everything on the Internet, before ranking the world's more than 108 million Web sites for search results.

Search engines are still relatively new -- Google celebrated its ninth birthday Sept. 27. But since the advent of search engines, people have worked to get their Web sites ranked among the top results. In fact, "search engine optimization" has become a $1.1 billion industry in that short time, and continues to grow fast.

"Google is a starting point for what many people perceive to be the Internet," said Low, whose business SearchEngineMarketing.com has worked with companies such as tech guru O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol. "Having a top result is a valuable way to reach potential customers."

Web crawlers can read text, but not pictures or moving images such as Adobe Flash designs. If the crawler can't read a keyword, the site likely will not show up at the top of a search result for that subject. So it is crucial that Web designers incorporate keywords into text and accurately describe a Web site and its pages.

To differentiate a product or service, it is important to use niche keywords and phrases. People selling olive oil made locally would want to make sure their Web site appeared in a search for "Sonoma County olive oil." The same is true for Sonoma County honey, organic rhubarb pie and so on. It is important that designers embed relevant text and phrases such as "Sonoma County honey" or "organic rhubarb pie" several times in the Web site. This will help search engines index it appropriately and increase the likelihood it appears in relevant searches.

"Marketing executives need to even think about that when naming new products. How will it be searched?" Low said.

Companies such as Google use complex equations -- called algorithms -- to take into account different factors for ranking Web sites in search results. An important factor in the equation is how many other Web sites such as blogs provide links to your Web site.

"In terms of getting ranked, the single most important thing you can do is get linked," Low said.

Knowing this, Ellis set out on a campaign to have other Web sites link to www.TheMexicanDress.com. A step that is perhaps easier than it sounds.

Online marketing

and bloggers

Ellis used grass roots marketing to generate a buzz with bloggers. She contacted various crafting and sewing Web sites such as www.craftzine.com and www.craftychica.com. Both sites blogged about the Mexican dress pattern and included links to Ellis' site.

"Every day I would try to contact one blogger, a craft blogger, a sewing blogger," she said. "Bloggers are always looking for something to write about."

Google gives a higher rating to links by popular bloggers -- determined by the number of people who visit the blog. Not only do the links move a Web site up in Google's ranking system, but they generates traffic too.

"We are always looking for link juice," Ellis said.

Of course, to get people to link to your Web site you must have an interesting product or service, and also a story.

"That is at the heart of all good marketing -- the ability to tell a good story," Low said. "Because then it can get legs and take off on its own. You create something that is worth talking about."

Generating this type of grass roots marketing isn't necessarily expensive. But building the Web site can be. Ellis said she would charge about $3,000 to build a Web site like www.TheMexicanDress.com, which has a credit card payment system.

That might be too expensive for some people and their hobby budgets. The alternative is to take a class on basic Web design at a place like Santa Rosa Junior College.

For small businesses, like organic honey producers or a local fashion designer, the long-term payout from a well-designed Web site might be worth the cost of entry. Especially if owners are willing to do grass roots marketing and reach out to the myriad bloggers who cover their field.

"If small businesses can find a little niche to go after, they can do really well for themselves online," Low said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nathan Halverson at 521-5494 or nathan.halverson@

pressdemocrat.com.