• Internet.com, Tuesday, November 4, 2008 1:45 PM

Despite difficult economic times, experts suggest now is not the time to cut back on SEM and SEO, according to Jennifer Schiff. "With online shoppers saying they plan on cutting back on spending this holiday season, now may be the perfect time for you to optimize your site to attract every prospective customer you can--and keep your current customers coming back for more," she writes. "Best of all, optimizing your site, giving it a pre-holiday facelift, needn't be expensive or time consuming. And the return on your investment could (and should) more than offset the cost."

It may mean redesigning your Web site to make it more attractive to search engine crawlers. Schiff provides an example from CoffeeCakes.com founder Sherry Comes, who says sales increased 50% "almost instantly" after making the site more accessible to Google, Yahoo and MSN. And she did it on a limited marketing budget. The site was redesigned, new content went up, and keyword and meta data reviewed, adding new ones as needed. "Just putting up fresh, new content is like catnip to the search engines," she said.

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