Many of you are aware I am a firm advocate of social media and golf.  Depending on my mood, I could change in a moment’s notice to it being Golf then Social Media, but I am sure you know I work to merge them together when I can.

Last evening I attending the monthly gathering of the Social Media Club of Dallas and was again offered another fabulous opportunity to learn more about what is behind Social Media.  In this case, we learned more about what the big deal is about SEO.  Bottomline: If you are going to make your time online worthwhile you need to understand SEO.

OK, for you newbies in my community, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  The term SEO is an overused term and listening to conversations on SEO in large doses will generally generate a nauseating feeling.  SEO is a hard concept to grasp. The SEO experts who were on last evening’s panel featuring Tony Wright, Tom McCracken and Jerod Morris moderated by Cameron Gawley did a great job.

However, SEO is only part of social media and needs to be understood if you are out to use social media correctly.

Keywords is another term that means different things to so many different people, but is the bases of SEO.  Bottomline:  How does SEO work.   Google’s search engine looks for words in the content it reviews that match the words entered into the Google Search field.  If your blog or website has these words in it,..or ‘Keywords’ as it is called…, then the entire article or blog that has these keywords will be listed in the trillions of listings Google posts in the search results.  The game that is played is..How to Get to the Front Page of the Google Search.

In the past SEO was much simpler to understand and as the result of so many people, places and things circumventing the process, to gain advantage of the Google Ranking on the search page, Google keeps making understanding SEO very difficult by frequently changing the rules for Ranking.  There are so many situations and rules in place now that understanding all of the SEO guidelines is a near impossibility.  Bottomline:  It is much harder for a grassroots effort to influence a higher ranking on the Google search.  So, to many, using SEO to get a higher placement on Google searches will be a real uphill experience.

However, there were a few tidbits of SEO information passed along to us last evening that actually could be heard over the rabble rousers in the back of the room who had a pocket of drink tickets to burn. One of the most catching bits of info was placing Keywords in the Title of a blog along with the Title.  Hummm..  So, as you see, I tried it above to see how it works.  Guess I’ll find out.

But enough of this SEO stuff..what about the Golf?  What I have learned about golf is, like Social Media, you have to actually practice playing golf like you practice using social media.  Of course, Golf is offline and social media is online, but wouldn’t it be great if they both were balanced equally online and offline?

Bottomline: Wouldn’t the world of golf benefit more if more golfers using the internet other than a place to record their scores?  Wouldn’t social media benefit more if more of the online talk was moved to offline venues?  And, Ultimately, wouldn’t it be great if golf and social media were used in more online and offline endeavors?  Wow, what a concept.

Of course, being the innovative thinker I am I do what I can to keep ahead of all these great ideas by creating places and things that address these very issues.  For Golf I created the Business Golf Country Club and the Business Golf Advisory Group .  For social media I created the ClamBake Cafe .   All were developed to balance online and offline social media efforts for the golf industry and for business people who play golf.  Bottomline: If you are a golfer and out to learn more about social media then these places and things I have created are the places to be.

As far as SEO..did you count the number of times I used the term SEO?  And as far as using SEO for Golf and Social Media..the same question goes for how many times I used the word golf and social media.  Bottomline: Quit playing games online and learn to play the game of golf.  It will keep you from having to worry so much about using SEO to develop business online by offering you a way of developing business offline as well.

Help golf by helping me put business back on course…the golf course.  Let me know how I can help.