Like most every technology-based company, regardless of industry or product, the Internet has become a key component of an overall marketing strategy. This certainly is the case here at HRN. The Internet has allowed us to grow and reach an ever growing audience across the country and around the world.

We spend a lot of time and effort refining our web presence to be ‘search engine friendly’ in hopes that when a user types a relevant human resources or employee performance management phrase into Internet search engine, our website will appear in the displayed results. On a weekly and sometimes daily basis I evaluate our search engine marketing results and make refinements. I often am surprised by what I see; especially in the area of top keywords or phrases.

So I find gratification in seeing that our ‘keyword strategy’ accurately tracks with keyword search results. But more often I am utterly surprised by what folks actually typed in that brought them to our website or blog.

For example, “office spouse” is a top 5 keyword phrase that it never occurred to me to build into our keyword strategy, but apparently there are a lot of folks out there interested in learning more about office spouses. And of these several found their way to our very own HR News & Views Blog.

Below are the top keyword search phrases on the HRN blog last week.
1. Office spouse
2. Office TV show
3. e-verify
4. Challenges of open enrollment
5. HR trivia
6. Example employee performance appraisals
7. HR announcement
8. Succession planning 2008
9. employee mental health day

And here’s my all time favorite (remember this is the exact phrase someone typed in)
10. Countries examined in a recent study, the US finished last

Go figure. So if you get nothing else for spending time reading this post . . . if you want folks to find your website and hit on your listing, liberally pepper your meta tags and content with the phrase “office spouse”.