The "magic" of search engine optimization.

Sometime about 20+ years ago a publisher told me his bright young college student reporter told him that the "key to wealth and success" for them (they were covering Federal government research opportunities) was to "be sure we use the word 'satellite' at least twice in every story and get rich on LexisNexis searches."

This story returns to mind when I consider the question of search engine optimization. SEO sounds a bit like alchemy ... a magic formula that will bring your newsletter to the forefront of internet searches.

Setting out on an information search for the first time ever, I felt a kinship with Warren Buffet who, I understand, won't invest in any company if he doesn't understand what it does.

Looking for enlightenment, I found a couple of online sites that provided information. Search for Vaughn's 1-pagers and look under both Google and I got more information than I could easily assimilate about what to do and not do in the area of SEO.

And, as I suppose I should have expected, Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is not only already in print but in its second edition (May 2006). It's $15.74 new from Amazon.com.

PC Advisor gives it a nice brief review, but it is 406 pages which, without having seen it, sounded like a lot for this dummy.

SEO research

However, all this surfing and reading tells me that this old dog isn't going to master the arcane vocabulary--meta-tags, spiders, and so forth--overnight so I set out into the field to do some "research."

How are newsletter publishers doing? I thought of a dozen newsletters that have been featured in NL/NL profiles and asked a search question that I thought should or might lead me to their websites.

Result? Almost zero. I made a dozen. One of them was how to write speeches for your boss. I was aiming for Ragan Communications' Speechwriter's Newsletter. But a workshop for McMurry, which also publishes a newsletter on speeches, came up. Otherwise, bupkus. I was amazed that a question about building your cremation business didn't lead me to Funeral Service Insider, because when I was there I swear we wrote that story at least every 3rd issue.

Perhaps I wasn't asking the "right questions," but we're in trouble if we have to depend on prospects to know exactly how to seek info about our newsletters.