I love my job.
I am currently an in-house search marketer for Medtronic, a major medical device manufacturer headquartered in Minneapolis, MN.
I have over ten years of Internet-related project experience now, but I got my start in Search Marketing back in 2001 at a rival medical device company.
As the only eBusiness Project Lead at that time I got to be known as the “Web Guy” by a few of the corporate executives that had offices near my cube at the corporate home office.
Well, one day the CEO mentions to the “Web Guy” that he is sick and tired of seeing litigation websites pop up in the search engine results for queries regarding our primary product.
Apparently, because of a voluntary recall a few years before, litigation attorneys had obtained good rankings for terms related to this product.
I told him I would see if there was anything we could do and proceeded to learn everything I could about search engine marketing from websites like searchenginewatch.com and highrankings.com.
With the help of a local SEO consultant I developed a program that would help us compete successfully in the search engines against the litigation websites.
The program increased our website exposure, resulting in top-10 ranking for targeted terms in nearly all of the major engines and directories, this compared to little or no exposure previously.
In the process we nearly doubled the number of visitors to the corporate website for two years running. Since this initial success I have gone on to do Search Marketing full time and teach others to drink the Kool-Aid as well.
I have even had the good fortune to be asked to speak more than once at Search Engine Strategies Conferences, as a panelist on the topic of Search in a Regulated Industry.
Medtronic is a great place to do the Search Marketing work I have come to enjoy so passionately.
We are a mission-driven company that strives to alleviate pain, restore health and extend the lives of our customers.
We do this by placing information about our product and therapies in front of people seeking help online for serious health issues.
I consider myself a professional search marketer who saves lives.