Ben Bleikamp's blog about technology and college

Learning about SEO and internet marketing

For the regular readers of the Bleikamp.com, you can either read this post or skip it. I am posting it as part of the homework for my marketing class. The class focuses on SEO and internet marketing, so part of what we’re learning about is blogging, link building, etc. So I am blogging for homework.

What I’ve learned so far

The course description says:

Focus on marketing management and strategy, marketing research, advertising and services as they relate to use of World Wide Web technologies.

So far I have learned a little bit, but a lot of it has been formally learning that a lot of what I do and what I’ve read really is what “professionals” are doing. The professor for the class is Laura Thieme, she owns and operates a search engine optimization company. It’s the first quarter that Ohio State’s business school has offered the class and so far it’s a class I think anyone interested in internet marketing or SEO should take.

I think the most important things I have learned about are the tools that “real” SEO experts use to learn about keywords and competition. I have known about Overture’s keyword research tool for a few years, but it’s not nearly as powerful as WordTracker. We have also used a powerful program called WebPosition Gold.

We’ve also been looking at the cost of customer acquisition, paid search vs. organic search, and the other topics that SEM people pay close attention to. I’ve always been aware of these issues and I’ve had clients ask me about them, but I’ve always had to direct them to someone who is better at SEO or send them to a site with free articles on the topic. After just a few weeks I can discuss the topics somewhat intelligently and by the end of the class I’ll know a lot more. Maybe I’ll be able to bump the SEO skill up to expert in on my work page.

Some Required Links

Now for the links I’m required to include in the post (it’s homework):

SES New York is the conference that Laura and her staff are at this week. They’ll be hosting a lunch and talking at a few sessions. The first session is on April 11th - it’s at 10:30am and it’s about web analytics and measuring success. The second one is also on Wednesday at 3:15pm - it’s called Fun with Dynamic Websites.

If yo want a know a little more about the course, check out the blog post about it at BizResearch’s marketing blog. You can also look at the syllabus from the Marketing Department’s website.