...wingthat in some cases it's hard to measure.What you are about to read is an interview with the Director ofOnline Communications for the American Cancer Society HighPlains Division.Let's get the formalities out of the way. What is your name andtitle?My name is David Neff and I am the Director of OnlineCommunications for The American Cancer Society High PlainsDivisionWhat does the director of online communications do?Basically, my job is to manage all the website design andmai...

...ntenance including any upgrades as well as any emailcampaigns we do. This includes any e-commerce that we get into.Do you do any type of search engine positioning on any of yourwebsites?Not really. Besides submitting to DMOZ and Google we don'tactively pursue any search engine marketing at this point. Mostof our promotions are done through print ads, Internet ads likeGoogle Adwords, banners and stuff like that. We don'tproactively go out and position.Now, we've talked before and you mentioned that the AmericanCancer Society has a few sites, including some which you aremore responsible for. Why doesn't the Cancer Society invest inpositioning?It's not on our priority list at this point. We are quite busypromoting our sites through the offline promotion that Imentioned earlier.Is there a reason that SEM isn't a priority?Decisions like that are made at a higher level and it's not wellknown how it works. There is no real "baby steps" that you cantake to get into it. In fact they [management] probably don'teven know about it that much. It's really not on [their] radarscreen.I've dealt with large organizations like yours and I've foundthat usually in order to get an SEM campaign off the groundthere needs to be an "SEM Evangelist" on staff. One person thatis the spearhead behind the campaign. Has there been anyone inyour office trying to push for it?Not at the moment but I'm seeing results from stuff I've talkedto you about and the early results are quite impressive. Also,other media I encounter has had me considering it. Maybe 2006will be the year to start pushing for an SEM campaign.You mentioned earlier that you do other Internet advertising.What type of Internet advertising do you do for the AmericanCancer Society?We've done banner advertising on a PDA tool and a ton of themajor sites. Finding PDA things that doctors read like http://www.webmd.com and http://www.pdamd.com. We actuallycontacted http://www.motricity.com aswell and we've done a lot of ads on a whole bunch of partnersites for a free product, yet we had to pay full price for thoseads.Next, we are planning to sell a golf pass to get you discountedgreen fees no matter where you golf across Texas. So we will beplacing ads for those soon as well. We will also be placingGoogle ads for these when the timing is right.As a search engine marketer I know that Google ads are generallypretty good traffic tools. How effective have they been for youin the past?The Google ads have been really great for us in the past - lotsof clicks over the holidays. They have been better than bannerads in some aspects.What would those aspects be?Rate of return. We've found that some banner ads generated a lotof traffic and interest in the past. We did notice, though, thatduring the holidays we got lots of views but not as many sales. So what you are saying is that you are getting better conversionrates on Google ads?Yes definitely.Who looks after your Google program?(Chuckles) I do unfortunately.Why do you say "unfortunately"? Is it a difficult job?No it's not difficult, it's just that I only check on it when Iget a bill because I have too much other stuff to do. We justdon't have the manpower to properly manage it. How did you go about choosing keywords for your Google campaign?We got together in the communications department and sat downand and just started searching. We used the words we thoughtpeople would use to search for our product and just made a list.Then we used the Google sandbox to help with other keywordsuggestions and from there we put our campaign together.So you are satisfied with Google. Is that the only paidadvertising engine you use? Or have you/do you use Yahoo?No, we haven't had time to investigate or anything like that.I'd like to at some point, but like I said: I'm the only onedoing it and I just don't have the time right now.How many sites do you look after?I have nine in all that I look after.And are all the sites you maintain Cancer related?No. We have a blogging site called http://www.quitnowblog.orgwhich is for college aged kids. It helps them with quittingsmoking and all the pains they go through to quit. The secondsite is http://www.schoolhealth.info/ - We've just redesigned the site and are ready to relaunchit. With that site it is used to get parents involved in kidsschools to get kids more healthy. And then there are a bunch ofothers.So how are these sites doing?We're getting a ton of response to the quit now blog. It seemsto be very popular with the target audience we are trying toreach.With all these sites, do you do cross promotion?Yes, definitely. When we do a quitnow blog and print campaignfor example, we ensure that and print material such as brochuresand ads match the site.For another site we do, http://www.texasgolfpass.com/, it too has been redesigned and matched to posters,brochures and so on. We definitely try and do complete campaignsto ensure the themes are consistent throughout.So, do you feel they've been successful using this brandedapproach across multiple media?Definitely. We've really stepped it up to ensure that ourwebsites match our print campaigns. It is one of our strongpoints right now.What would you like to do differently with your online campaigns?The main thing would be to investigate Yahoo ads and everyoneelse out there besides Google but my main challenge is that Idon't have enough time to do that. I'd also like to investigate search engine optimization but Ineed to find a way to sell it to management. I need a one page"This is why you need to do SEO" that I can take to them andshow them that we need to do more.Do you think that your management is resistant to SEO?No, not really. It's just an education thing. I need to find away to show them why it is so important and I don't know whereto start to show them at a non-technical level.Thank you for your time David, it's been a pleasure talking toyou. One more thing, if there is one thing anyone in ourcommunity can do for The American Cancer Society, what would itbe?Gosh, I don't know. I know we do need help but there are so manyareas we could use it. Being a non-profit group, our budgets arealways tight. I guess just help us get more well-known. We haveall these sites we use to help spread healthy messages, and atthe same time we have others we use to help raise money. Anyhelp that we can get for these would be greatly appreciated.As he said, if there is anything you can do to help out thisworthwhile cause, they could really use it. Whether it'ssupplying some links to the smaller sites like the golf passsites or quit now site, if you can use your SEM experience tohelp get the word out they would really appreciate it.