* Eric Schmidt
Wednesday mornings follow a similar pattern for me. There is the initial inward groan of it being Wednesday – blog day. With no ideas of what to put down on paper, my mind flits between being compelled to continue the streak of posts (save for the occasional holiday gap!) versus the luxury of a day off. What is the saying? A break is as good as a rest. The reticence is usually short lived, and I search around for inspiration.
Topic found and final draft completed I upload the text, a background image and the opening quote to WordPress and hit ‘publish’. But WordPress always has some doubts about whether this is a good idea, so it doesn’t publish. Instead, it flashes up a series of warnings, highlighting the inadequacies of my post. King of the warnings I receive is a red sad face against “SEO” (Search Engine Optimisation). This is where my defiance kicks in and I press hard again on the publish button, and watch the deficient blog wing its way to the world wide web.
But something happened yesterday which may give rise to some pause when I undoubtedly see the sad face of the SEO today. For a while I have been in search of a solution. Although my company is Institutional Adviser Limited, I work with a few other organisations; for each I have an email address and a calendar. When I organise a meeting, I diligently enter the details into one calendar and then have to block the corresponding time across the other calendars. This is inefficient and an issue which I am sure I am not alone in facing – those two factors must mean that there is a solution out there, so I turned to my friend Google for the answer. Incredibly, nothing was forthcoming other than advice on how to manually enter calendar entries. The gauntlet was thrown down and I accepted the challenge of a more detailed trawl of the internet.
Lying hidden among page 4 or 5 of search results was the word ‘Calenderio’ with the hint that therein may lie the answer. A quick check out of the site, the promise of a free trial, a speedy sign up and bingo, problem solved – with great satisfaction, I sat back to see the magical population of my secondary calendars with data from the first.
But what does this have to do with SEO? Well, at the bottom of the confirmation order email was the sentence ‘I’m curious to learn how you found Calenderio’. This was not one of those automated tick box things, this was genuine curiosity from a genuine human being. I replied telling of my perseverance and ultimate discovering through the web, but requested in return why he asked the question? His response – well ‘I’ve done very little marketing/SEO optimization work’, so surprised you found me.
The moral of the story? I guess if fame is to be found through my weekly posts, I must heed the warnings of the SEO sad face and embark upon diligent optimisation. More importantly, a digital marketing strategy needs to take such things seriously. But that said there was something a bit special about discovering a hidden gem and, in my case, having a very selective readership has a certain appeal!
