As published in the June 8, 2007 Boulder County Business Report.
By Jeff James
LOUISVILLE - If you’re a small business owner with a company Web site, you may think your online presence is established, and you can go back to dealing with real-world management and administrative issues.

While launching a Web site for your business may have been a significant accomplishment in the 1990s, today’s Internet is driven by a number of factors, mainly the rise of search engines like Google and Yahoo. Most users may turn to these search tools to find your business, but how do you stand out from the millions of other Web sites on the Internet?

That’s where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes in. It’s one of the many services that Tricalyx - a new Louisville-based business founded by former Webroot Software executives Lee Kennedy, Kathy Keating and Trina Blazek - plans to offer its clients.

The importance of a solid SEO strategy for any corporate Web site is something that Kennedy and the Tricalyx team strongly believes, noting that demographic changes and technology usage patterns are having a huge impact on how businesses attract customers.

“As our society has gotten older, there are millions of people under the age of 35 who don’t know what Yellow Pages are or what a phone book looks like,” Kennedy said. “It’s so much easier to sit down in front of the computer, type in a name and find what you’re looking for. Companies that aren’t coming up on Internet searches simply aren’t being found.”

Shar VanBoskirk, a senior analyst with Forrester Research, said SEO is becoming a vital component of any corporate Web strategy.

“Search marketing overall represents the lion’s share of the online marketing budget (about 40 percent today), and it stands to grow to over half of the online budget by 2010,” VanBoskirk said. “This means significant opportunity for any provider who wants to get into the space.”

In addition to SEO, Tricalyx provides consulting services, software tools and other development services to help companies maximize the reach and effectiveness of their Internet presence. Tricalyx also provides basic Web site development services (starting at $695), site development with e-commerce (beginning at $1695), as well as custom site development and unique solutions designed to maximize Web traffic to selected sites.

If a company is looking to upgrade its existing Web presence, Kennedy has some advice that can help make the upcoming revamp more effective.

“(You’ll want to offer) great content that they can’t find in other places,” Kennedy said. “Make your Web site a destination that people want to go to for interesting and relevant information and that other sites want to link to … Google and Yahoo have gotten really smart about the algorithms they use for search engine results. They can weed out most of the tricks that some sites use to artificially inflate their search rankings. What you’ll need is good, relevant content on your keywords, links to great outbound content and good inbound links from other sites.”

According to Kennedy, the entire Tricalyx team has developed a philosophy that sets them apart from their competitors, namely an intense focus on helping customers derive real financial value from their Web sites.

“People don’t need just a pretty Web site,” Kennedy said. “They need Web sites that are SEO-focused and designed to improve revenue and decrease costs.”

As a small-business owner herself, Kennedy and her partners faced the same challenges that entrepreneurs throughout Colorado have when starting a business. Kennedy used her own company as an example for those who want to start their own businesses. “Decide what you are going to do and just do it. Don’t let anyone discourage you, make a plan and follow it.”