SEO by the SEA

Yesterday in class Bill Slawski from SEO by the SEA spoke to our class. The original guest speaker cancelled, and luckily, Mr. Slawski was nice enough to come to our class and speak to us with very little notice.

Mr. Slawski spoke to us about many different things that his company, SEO by the Sea, does on a regular basis. According to their website, SEO by the Sea "offers internet marketing services, helping businesses and organizations be found in local and web search engine results, and improving usability and conversion rates for web sites." More simply put, "We make it easier for people to find your website, and to use it."

Mr. Slawksi detailed for us the process that his company goes through when working with different clients. The process begins by identifying the client's goals and needs for their website. SEO by the Sea can then go about trying to reach those goals by improving the client's website.

He also talked to us about Google's "PageRank" system, which we have talked about in class. Google's PageRank feature rates websites based on importance as opposed to just relevance. I think he said that there are less than ten webpages that are ranked as 10 (the best), where as there are about 2,000 that are ranked as a 9. I had never heard this before and this was surprising to me.

After hearing his presentation, I wondered how many other similar SEO (search enginge optimization) companies exist. From a quick Google search, I found these companies (SEO by the Sea's competitors):

Patrick Gavin, Inc.
Inteliture
E-Traffic Jams

These are just a few Search Engine Optimization companies. It was somewhat hard to find them because most of the links that are displayed do not display the companies name but more actual information about the company (such as the phrase "search engine optimization), but I assume they know best that this is a good way to set up their website.

Overall, the presentation was very informative and tied into several different concepts we talked about in class (even though not many people were willing to raise their hands and confess that.) Interestingly enough, today when I went to the website (www.seobythesea.com), Mr. Slawski had made a post in his blog about his presentation to our class. As of today (May 1st, 2007), there were already thirteen comments on the post. I think this is a great example of what we have been learning in class about blogs and social marketing.