Get Buzzed

So, a few weeks ago…ok, maybe more like over a month ago, I attended an SEO (search engine optimization) workshop through IABC Phoenix featuring one of my favorite presenters. One of my 2010 goals as online media manager was to shove as much info about SEO as humanly possible into my brain.

As my pen flew across the paper to write down every priceless jewel of information being shared (Side note: I’m a black belt-level note-taker— 9 pages, front and back!), my brain swam with visions of dominating the world with my SEO aptitude. Yes, it’s true, I had fantastical schemes of “optimizing” every press release, tweet, Facebook status, etc. I was going to type up all of my notes and immediately share them with my colleagues.

And then, as so often happens (here is where the story turns) I had client projects and events that were priority, countless meetings to attend, Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages to update, and so on. Ugh, how to achieve my SEO glory?? Then, the rational part of my brain reasserted itself and I read an article on Mashable.com about reactionary work flow and tips for online community managers. Both of these articles stressed the need to step back from the constant demand to know about what’s going on online.

So, I stepped back.

First, SEO is important and we need to start paying closer attention to it when working with online planning. But if you really want to get all nitty-gritty, the rules of SEO change as they upgrade the algorithms search engines use, and they all use different algorithms -- optimizing for Google is different from optimizing for Bing. The short answer to my dilemma is to put forth the best effort possible to optimize the content we put online and practice my, um, Zen.

What it really comes down to, despite all of these fabulous technologies, is people. The people behind the Facebook fan page, behind the Twitter account and blog posts. It is my opinion that the reason so many of these “social networks” took off is because the Internet was finally leveraged to not only share info but to bring people together – a “virtual village,” if you will, that has no limitations.

Finally, what did I gain out of the SEO workshop? One of the reasons this online strategy is important is because “if you can be found, then you can connect with the customer.” Google is our world’s library and just as libraries have rules about how to shelve books… Google runs on rules about how to categorize websites.

Who knows how the web will change in the next few years, after all, social networks sprang up and took off within the past five years. In the meantime, we can work at tailoring our content, not to beat the system (when SEO rules are abused they are changed!) but so that our target audience can find us.

So, I bid you adieu at this point, fair reader. For, I’m off now to rule the world in SEO…feel free to come along!

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