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Miki Dzugan, President,
Rapport Online Inc.
Miki Dzugan believes that online marketing efforts should produce positive bottom-line results. That
comes from many years of general management experience. Dzugan brings more than 30 years of
experience in the fields of manufacturing, software development, computer hardware marketing and
sales, computer software consulting, property management, education, and hospitality management
into her position as president at Rapport. Her varied background enables her to quickly grasp the
management goals of companies, and then define ways for them to integrate the use of the Internet
into their marketing communications functions.
Rapport Online Inc was founded as an outgrowth of many years of Internet marketing and web-
site development experience. Building rapport aptly describes the power that Internet communica-
tions tools bring to doing business.
Rapport encompasses “branding” and believes that branding online is not achieved through adver-
tising, but rather through experience and “buzz.” Rapport stresses direct communication and har-
mony in its environment, and strives to provide these to its customers.
Jerri: What do you see as the current state of SEO?
Dzugan:
For many SEO experts, the SEO/search engine relationship is a game of chess, us vs. them.
They try to game the search engine to get their client to the top of the heap by taking advantage
of what they can understand of the search engine algorithms. This may be done without respect to
whether the site really belongs at the top of results. In other words, the search engine has the objec-
tive to produce the most useful result for the searcher and the SEO is working to push his/her client
in the searcher’s face.
SEOs that work against the best interest of the search engine are killing the golden goose. If the
search engine does not produce good results, it will not be used.
Working with the best interest of search engines and searchers as well as our clients produces last-
ing results. Sites that are optimized to rank high in results where they provide the best value are not
as vulnerable to changes in search algorithms. Clients that were optimized years ago still retain high
position in results even for quite competitive search terms.
You will find SEO divided into black hat and white hat with a big gray area that the experts debate.
My thought is that if you are helping search engines to serve the searchers well, you are behaving
ethically and effectively in the long term.
Jerri: What do you mean by helping the search engine serve searchers well? Are there specific
activities that organizations should be doing?
Dzugan:
The worst case of not serving the searchers well is to optimize a porn site to come up on
top for a search for “candy land” for example. This kind of abuse is really hard to get past search
engines now. It is easier to identify activities that organizations should not be doing — there is
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Industry Interviews
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