11 November 2008

Away from my desk......

I am finally back from my vacation on NyQuil Islands. I guess my punishment for missing class and not blogging last week was to get the mother of all colds. Fear not, I have a couple good internet marketing topics to blog about this week.

Since I've been sick, I have neglected not only my schoolwork, but my office work as well. This morning as I was cleaning up my email and voice mail messages, I came across some correspondence from a company called Keyword First. This company wants to get in touch with me about our corporate website and optimizing its content for search engine optimization. What timing since I'm taking an internet marketing class this quarter and actually know about what they are trying to sell us! At the start of the quarter, I was wondering if there were any businesses in place or starting up that specialized in SEO for corporate sites. Well, yep... here's at least one, but there are likely plenty more out there. Keyword First has been around since 2005, but says their personnel have been in the search industry since 2000.

In any case I checked out the PDF brochure they sent me and was glad to find out that we've covered in class pretty much everything they offer through their SEO services including:
  • Website Analysis
  • Meta Data Creation / Improvement
  • URL Re-structuring
  • Content Creation & Optimization
  • Directory Submissions
  • Link Building Strategies
  • Position Reporting

My company is planning to revamp its website in the coming months, so maybe I can score a nice bonus from the boss if I tell him I can handle optimizing our new webpages in house. Cha-ching!

Ok, next topic, also from the hallways of my office....

My boss was so impressed with my appearance in Entrepreneur last month that he had the article posted on a plaque for me to keep forever and ever and ever (and hang on the walls of that corner office I'll eventually end up in). The company he ordered it from put some of their sales materials in the packaging and one of the brochures was from a sister company called "That's Great PR!" I would characterize TGPR! as a semi-PR company with a digital twist. What they focus on is writing press releases about you, your company, whatever you pay them for really, but optimizing the documents for search engine optimization so they will help increase your corporate website's rankings on sites like Google, Yahoo! and the like.

Of course, they charge per release, and encourage you to have a "regular" stream of press releases because, "...regular press releases will help boost your placement on search engines. The more places your company is found, the better your ranking online (and the more people can find you)." Yes, we know this is true, at least for Google rankings, but does it make sense to issue press releases "just because"? Won't people eventually see right through these countless pages? I'm sure there are companies with little to no internal resources for PR management, and for them TGPR! can provide a really good service and help some businesses increase their web presence. On the other hand, once a little bit of an investment is made in PR writing, companies can learn how to write their own press releases and submit them to online sources without the (overpriced) assistance of TGPR.

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