NETWORX Electronic Publishing, a web site marketing and new media production company, is banking on a new contract to boost business.
The Arundel-based company has been app-ointed by HSBC Bank International, one of the world's leading offshore banking and financial organisations, to raise the profile of the bank's offshore internet banking service.
The six-month campaign to increase custom-er interest started last month and runs through to next April.
Managing director Martin Huxford said: "About 85 per cent of internet users use search engines, directories and portals.
"This isn't like advertising, which is unsolicited. These people are looking for specific products and, if you can get your company's site near the top of the list when the search results are returned, you are maximising your business opportunities.
"Our job is to make sure HSBC International is listed and ranked where its target audience is going to search for the offshore financial services and products it offers."
Initially, the main emphasis of the campaign will be submitting the bank to directories, portals and search engines to ensure the correct pages are indexed.
National and international search engines and directories Networx will be targeting include Freeserve, Ask Jeeves and Google. Localised search engines are also being sought.
Networx is optimising the bank's pages by the research and creation of meta-tags - hidden words and phrases describing a site and its contents that encompass titles, descriptions and keywords for relevant pages.
Mr Huxford said this helped people searching for products and services and companies to find potential customers.
He said: "Search engines are looking for the most relevant pages but this doesn't always work.
"We optimise pages to make sure people find information they are seeking. We look at a site and gauge how well it is doing on the search engines.
"We look at its visibility, the competition from other sites and the competition for keywords.
"It is all about reaching potential customers more effectively."
Mr Huxford said the popularity of certain keywords made them bad for describing sites.
He said: "If you search for gardening, you might return 500,000 hits but if a site described itself more accurately using phrases like 'gardening tools' or the name of specific plants, it would have a better chance of being found.
"Once you have researched the keywords, you can use them in titles, to describe pictures and in the text.
"In HSBC's case, using 'banking' as the keyword doesn't make much sense when you can be far more specific.
"For example, 'offshore banking' is more exclusive and HSBC is going to have a better chance of reaching customers."
Search engine optimisation was becoming more important, especially for services like offshore banking, which attracted international customers.
"The internet can be reached from almost anywhere and, if companies use it properly, it can play a key role in the development of international businesses.
"But companies have to remember this is not something you can bolt on to a site. You have to make it search engine friendly from the beginning."
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