Firm Stitches Right Words for Growth

Type “stage drapes” into a Google search box on the Internet and the first result that pops up after the ads is Sew What Inc. of Rancho Dominguez.

That hard-won visibility has helped the theatrical drape maker land new clients around the globe, including rockers Neil Young, Tom Petty and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Sales rocketed 45% in 2005 to $2.4 million and are on track to almost double to $4 million by the end of this year, company owner Megan Duckett said.

The company even made it onto the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in May, or, rather, its drapes did. A custom set of retro red velvet curtains trimmed in gold by Sew What is the backdrop for the legendary artists who appear in a photo illustration for the 1,000th issue of the music magazine.

Duckett credits her company’s dramatic sales growth to a careful redesign of her website, (www.sewwhatinc.com), 18 months ago. The redesign, her third, included using a Web marketing strategy known as search engine optimization that can boost a company’s rank in the results of an online search.

“It’s now my third true love,” Duckett said. “Husband first, baby second and optimization third.”

Optimization uses key search words and website content to try to edge out the competition in search engine results. It can be used to make a company show up higher in the results of a so-called organic, or regular, search, as well as in the pay-per-click results. Those are the ads that show up alongside the nonpaid results.

Optimization can be a powerful tool, particularly for small businesses.

“It doesn’t matter how great your website is. If nobody can find it, it is doing you no good,” said Duckett, who started sewing stage drapes on her kitchen table in 1992.

Making it easier for customers to find a company via a search engine such as Google -- which has about 50% of the online search market -- or Yahoo has become a big business.

Spending on search engine marketing hit $5.75 billion in North America last year, according to industry group Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, based in Wakefield, Mass. That’s a 44% increase over 2004 levels. By 2010, the group expects spending to almost double to $11 billion.

Marketers are spending big bucks to figure prominently in search engine results because research shows consumers increasingly turn to the Internet to learn about products and services before making a purchase.

If a company shows up higher on the list of search results, it has a better chance of attracting the notice of potential customers.

Duckett’s smart use of information technology has earned her the 2006 national Small Business Excellence award given last month by computer maker Dell Inc. and the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The award recognizes small companies for their innovative use of technology.

She will receive $30,000 in Dell technology and services and spend a day at Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, in September, meeting with founder Michael Dell and other company executives.

“This is someone who has really incorporated technology into a very traditional business,” said Frank Muehleman, vice president of the U.S. Home and Small Business unit at Dell.

A starter package for search engine optimization costs about $3,000, said Cindy McMahen, principal of Search Marketing Pros. Inc. of Riverside and a Sew What consultant.

Technology hasn’t always played a big role at Sew What, Duckett said. When she incorporated in 1998 and hired her first employee, timecards were calculated by hand. Bookkeeping was done on paper. The sewing machines weren’t computerized. Even e-mail was beyond Duckett’s abilities.

It wasn’t until she sought out a mentor who helped her take a step back and evaluate the business that Duckett’s eyes were opened.

“I discovered I was behind the times and I needed to start moving forward and embracing various technologies,” Duckett said.

Once she learned about search engine optimization and set out to redo her website a third time, Duckett finally got the results she wanted.

With McMahen’s help, Duckett targeted seven of her website’s 35 pages for optimization. They decided which products she wanted to promote and then researched the online competitors.

The trick is to find key products that are important to the business but have the least amount of online competition, Duckett said.

Wording key search terms is almost an art. The term “backdrop,” for example, brought up too many competitors, including photography backdrops. “Stage drapes” was a better choice, the women found.

So that phrase was written into the targeted pages as often as possible, in as natural a way as possible. This is known as keyword density.

And Duckett, who actually offers few products for sale online, beefed up the information content of her site. She knows that if drama teachers and others link to her site for educational purposes, for example, the extra clicks to her site can count in her favor and move her up in a search engine’s results.

Duckett spends about $400 a month on maintenance, reassessing and re-optimizing new terms, trying to protect her rankings.

“You can’t make a one-time investment and walk away from it,” Duckett said. “If you do, you will be sadly, sadly disappointed.”

Cyndia Zwahlen can be reached at cyndia.zwahlen@ latimes.com.