By David Byrd

I came up with the title for this blog before I began cooking this weekend. I had only one task. Create a dish where extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) was the star. However, fate decided differently. Friday, we decided to have burgers for dinner, and faced with a choice of either going to the store for hamburger or grinding my own, I chose to grind the meat myself. It was a choice roast, quality meat but inexpensive. I performed a double-grind following a tip I had seen somewhere in my past. The texture of the meat was so light as I gently kneaded it into burgers. Moreover, the finished product was amazing. The burgers were light, juicy and very flavorful. I enjoyed the taste so much, that Saturday I purchased an additional chuck roast and performed a double-grind again for Italian gravy with ground beef and sausage. Prior to browning the meat, I again made a small burger and tested it for flavor and tenderness. It was just as amazing as the prior days effort. I may need to grind my own meats going forward, the taste is that good. OK back to EVOO, obviously, the Italian meat sauce did not feature the EVOO, nor did the baked pasta dish that resulted. That left Sunday as the day of reckoning. I was considering three components for dinner: veal chops, lump crab and a mixed spring salad. The veal chops were seasoned and grilled. The lump crab I folded into a pesto sauce thinned with EVOO and a little bit of mayonnaise. This was a twist on the classic Steak Diane with Crab. The pesto and crab mixture was very good. Finally, the salad, dressed with EVOO and pineapple vinegar. Everything tasted good but none leaped to the forefront as the recipe of the week. Therefore, I am offering a recipe from a previous weekend when I had two great dishes. These stuffed grilled pork chops are very flavorful. In using pepperoni and the optional jalapenos, the stuffing successfully peers with the grilled chops rather being an afterthought. Make these Grilled Stuffed Pork Chops and your family and friends will cheer. Enjoy!

SEO

Over the last decade, broadband speeds have allowed businesses and consumers to connect in new unimaginable ways. With a simple search on Google, customers have gained unparalleled access to any information they are seeking both good and bad.  This week, I will take a step back from discussing IP communications and focus on the ever-expanding industry of online marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of tweaking and adjusting content to make your website more search engine friendly.  This capability set has been around for quite some time but has recently grown in importance as companies realize the value of high search rankings for related keywords. Showing up on the first page of a Google, Bing, or Yahoo search provides your company prime real estate to connect with potential customers. Additionally, by leveraging SEO GEO targeting tactics, businesses can target customers locally or regionally based upon their business presence.

Years ago, people viewed SEO as a secretive and manipulative process where individuals could game the system and implement questionable tactics to maneuver websites to the top of the rankings. This was a false perspective. Google and the other search engines actually encourage companies to use SEO best practices in website design. By implementing certain techniques, businesses help increase usability and standardize Web search, which creates a better experience for anyone searching for information. A quick example of this includes using an alt= tag when placing an image online. The alt text for images enables a company to describe the image, which is important for text-based browsers or browser readers for the blind. Without the alt description tag, there would be no way for the search engine to know what the image is.

Finally, in the arena of SEO, Google is very important. Globally, Google has an 84.8 percent market share and 65 percent in the U.S.  Bing is on the rise, but your best bet at achieving strong SEO results is to focus your efforts on Google.

This week the blog is dedicated to offering additional information and links on internet marketing. The more knowledgeable we become in marketing IP communications, the stronger we will be as an industry.

SEM will be the subject for Wednesday. See you then.

avid Byrd is vice president of marketing and sales for

Broadvox

, and is responsible for marketing and channel sales programs to SMBs, enterprises and carriers as well as defining the product offering. Prior to joining Broadvox, David was the Vice President of Channels and Alliances for Eftia and Telcordia. As Director of eBusiness Development with i2 Technologies, he developed major partnerships with many of the leaders in Internet eCommerce and supply chain management. As CEO of Planet Hollywood Online he was a pioneer in using early internet technologies to build a branded entertainment and eCommerce website company partnered with Planet Hollywood. Having over twenty years of Telecom sales and marketing experience, he has held executive positions with Hewlett-Packard, Sprint and Ericsson.