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I recently had the opportunity to discuss SEO/SEM with The American Cancer Society.  What you are about to read is part two of my interview with David Neff, the Director of Online Communications for the American Cancer Society High Plains Division. Click here to read part one.

How did you go about choosing keywords for your Google campaign?

We got together in the communications department and sat down and and just started searching.  We used the words we thought people would use to search for our product and just made a list.

Then we used the Google sandbox to help with other keyword suggestions and from there we put our campaign together.

So you are satisfied with Google.  Is that the only paid advertising 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.

How many sites do you look after?

I have 9 altogether that I look after.

And are all the sites you maintain Cancer related?

No.  We have a blogging site called quitnowblog.org which is for college aged kids.  It helps them with quitting smoking and all the pains they go through to quit.  The second site is schoolhealth.info - We’ve just redesigned the site and are ready to relaunch it.  With that site it is used to get parents involved in kids schools to get kids more healthy.  And then there are a bunch of others.

So how are these sites doing?

We’re getting a ton of response to the quit now blog.  It seems to be very popular with the target audience we are trying to reach.

With all these sites, do you do cross promotion?

Yes, definitely.  When we do a quitnow blog and print campaign for example, we ensure that and print material such as brochures and ads match the site.

For another site we do, texasgolfpass.com, it too has been redesigned and matched to posters, brochures and so on.  We definitely try and do complete campaigns to ensure the themes are consistent throughout.  In the future it will be re-designed as we expand the program to offer golf passes in many other states.

So, do you feel they’ve been successful using this branded approach across multiple media?

Definitely.  We’ve really stepped it up to ensure that our websites match our print campaigns.  It is one of our strong points right now.

What would you like to do differently with your online campaigns?

The main thing would be to investigate Yahoo ads and everyone else out there besides Google but my main challenge is that I don’t have enough time to do that.

I’d also like to investigate search engine optimization but I need 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 and show 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.

Thank you for your time David, it’s been a pleasure talking to you.  One more thing, if there is one thing anyone in our community can do for The American Cancer Society, what would it be?

Thanks for asking. The American Cancer Society has many programs that SEO could help with. Our core values of Research, Advocacy, Education and Service are what make our organization work. If we can get that message out to more people using SEO that would be great.  Also I would invite all your readers to check out our biggest two Blogs: FISpace www.fispace.org and Dr. Len’s Cancer Blog at www.cancer.org/drlen.

This concludes part two of my interview with David Neff from the American Cancer Society.

As he said, if there is anything you can do to help out this worthwhile cause, they could really use it.  Whether it’s supplying some links to the smaller sites like the golf pass sites or quit now site, if you can use your SEM experience to help get the word out they would really appreciate it.

Rob Sullivan is a SEO Consultant and Writer for Textlinkbrokers.com. Textlinkbrokers is the trusted leader in building long term rankings through safe and effective link building. Please provide a link directly to Textlinkbrokers when syndicating this article.