Back and Ready to Roll

First off, I have a bit of explaining to do. Namely, where have I been since the start of the new year? Well, the simple answer is “I’ve been busy.” But not with general day-to-day "CTO stuff" mind you. You see, this January we made a New Year’s Resolution, and my job is to make sure we keep it. We’ve cooked up some pretty neat things that should be very visible as the weeks and months ahead unfold, and one or two you might notice right away.

We’re about to roll forward a new online initiative that, besides serving your information needs better, will actually allow you to see how Web 2.0 and the information economy, combined with Web Content Management can be put to use to achieve real business goals. In short, the resolution we made was to practice what we preach - in everything we do! You’ll get to see what we’re calling “Compelling Content Experiences” in action right here on Percussion.com, but perhaps more importantly get an insider view here on "contentions" on just how we’re using Rhythmyx as well as the other technologies that make Web 2.0 so exciting.

The first sign of change you might already have noticed. We’ve gone multi-site. Our entire “Percussion Tools” product line has been moved to its own dedicated site, aptly named PercussionTools.com. This one little shift serves as a pretty good example of what a company can gain with a multi-site environment.

The Percussion Tools product line has operated as a separate line of business from Percussion’s Rhythmyx Web Content Management for many years. The customers are generally distinct, as are the technologies and markets. Originally, our belief was that having a single site with dedicated product areas would make both sets of customers feel they were being treated equally by Percussion. But in the end, it simply made it harder for these very different types of visitors to find what they needed. With a separate site, customers for each brand now have a quicker path to the information they need.

But there were other benefits. Search engines tune their rankings according to how focused any site is on the search topic in question. By having two totally separate sites, each is now more focused and ranked higher in external search engines for the terms they use. For example, in just the last month since making that simple switch, our Search Engine Optimization for the term “content management software” has increased by ten times or more! As practitioners of SEO know, it’s a constant effort to keep up, but then, that’s the Web.

Still, that kind of improvement is just the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully, the rest will be worth the wait.