Catherine Wood Hill and her mother Michelle Wood co-founded La Grande Dame, an online retailer of high-end, plus-size designer clothing, to offer stylish options in a market Ms. Hill said is rife with “stuff that looks like it’s for your grandma.” They knew a need existed — their research indicated that 62 percent of American women were plus-size, including Ms. Wood, 51, who wears a size 18 and was frustrated by the lack of alternatives — but were unsure how to reach prospects. After reading up on search engine optimization (also known as S.E.O.), the younger Ms. Hill, a 28-year-old former public relations professional, thought she had the answer: “It seemed like Google AdWordsruled the world.”

So when the Web site made its debut in April 2009, she chose a marketing strategy that was heavily focused on AdWords, Google’s pay-per-click advertising product, which competes with similar offerings from Yahoo, Microsoft and others. La Grande Dame purchased Google search terms like “plus size clothing,” “trendy plus size dresses,” and “Marina Rinaldi” (a plus size designer). In addition, Ms. Hill, La Grande Dame’s chief executive, experimented with e-mail list rental and retained a public relations specialist.

In June 2009, La Grande Dame spent $13,930 on marketing but made only  $3,838 in sales, for a monthly loss of $10,092. “We got a lot of traffic, but it didn’t convert to sales,” Ms. Hill said. “We’d spend $500 a day on AdWords and make $250.” Something had to change.

Seeking a better return on her investment, Ms. Hill, who is based in Los Altos, Calif., began tweaking La Grande Dame’s AdWords campaign. She opted for more specific search terms, like “Anna Scholz strapless cotton poplin dress.” This “long tail” strategy envisions a bell curve with the greatest number of online searchers clustered at the center, typing in general terms like “plus size clothing” — but not necessarily being ready to buy. At the ends of the bell curve — the so-called long tails — are people using more specific terms who are, in theory, more serious shoppers. But the theory wasn’t proven, and sales remained elusive.

Ms. Hill kept tweaking. She set a daily $50 limit with Google, which meant that once La Grande Dame incurred $50 worth of charges, its ad would no longer display. “We spent less money but still weren’t getting qualified buyers,”  Ms. Hill said. The same thing happened when La Grande Dame began showing its ads only between the prime online shopping hours of 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Similarly, having Google target the top 10 — and then the top 100 — ZIP codes in terms of household income proved ineffective.

Meanwhile, La Grande Dame had a six-month contract with a public relations specialist who received approximately $500 a month to place stories about the company in suitable publications. For example, the specialist got La Grande Dame mentioned in a magazine that aims at plus-size models. But Ms. Hill noted that the women who pursue plus-size modeling are typically too young to afford La Grande Dame’s relatively expensive clothing, so it wasn’t a great match.

In the months after La Grande Dame’s opening, Ms. Hill also turned to a list vendor to rent the e-mail addresses of 500,000 female online shoppers with household incomes of more than $100,000. Of the 500,000 e-mail messages that La Grande Dame sent out, only 10,000 were opened. Of those, only 1,000 people signed up for La Grande Dame’s newsletter. Within three months, half of them unsubscribed. Ultimately, only 15 shoppers bought anything. “We were too new for that strategy,” said Ms. Hill. “We had no name recognition.” Additionally, she said that she would only try this again if she could ascertain that her e-mail messages would reach plus-size shoppers.

Eventually, Ms. Hill chose to lose the P.R. specialist, ditch the e-mail list vendors, and skip AdWords altogether. “Now, I do everything myself,” she said. She concluded that successful S.E.O. had three components: the content on your pages; getting other sites to link to yours; and the way in which your site is coded. “I can control the first two on a daily basis,” said Ms. Hill, who has no coding background.

She reviewed each of her Web pages to ensure that they highlighted the keywords that get the most hits. For example, “designer plus size clothing” does very well in organic search results. That’s why the term appears on almost every page of La Grande Dame’s site. “The key is to frequently use phrases like that without sounding robotic,” said Ms. Hill, who also makes sure to use the terms in her daily blog posts.

She also began to seek links. Each morning she visits her favorite blogs, posting relevant comments and always leaving La Grande Dame’s Web address. Next, she does a Google search for every mention of “plus size” within the previous 24 hours. That’s how she stumbled across a blog for plus-size mothers and found a post about a dog. Ms. Hill, a dog lover, posted her own thoughts on the subject and — of course — a link to La Grande Dame.

Finally, she gave the company a social media presence. La Grande Dame recently had 2,200 Facebook fans, and more than 1,500 Twitter followers. They read tidbits on things like La Grande Dame sales and the best hairstyles for large women and updates on Ms. Hill’s pregnancy (her first baby was born on July 25).

“These tactics are more personal, bring in more qualified customers, and cost significantly less,” Ms. Hill said. Better yet, they’re effective. In June, the company spent just $30 on marketing, but had sales of $6,053 — up more than 50 percent from the previous June when Ms. Hill spent almost $14,000 on marketing.

Tags: Google Adwords, NYT, plus size, SEO