Greetings!  My name is Jeff Billman.  As the new Vice President of Marketing for Config.com, Inc., I'd like to take a moment to tell you all about me and about the exciting things that are happening here at Config.

I came to Config this past summer, as I've heard and read many things in the news lately about how this local ISP is moving into e-commerce, Internet Marketing, and-- of course-- Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  I am from Portage County; as a proud graduate of Windham High School, it is therefore exciting to me to see a local company be on the cutting edge of Internet technology. 

Upon graduating from Windham in 1990, I attended Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.  There, I worked for BGSU's University Computer Services, and was active with Internet technologies from the very start of the World Wide Web in the early 1990's.  I also am pleased to have worked with several rising stars in the IT field, fellow classmates of mine who are today working for such IT and commercial leaders as Yahoo!, Novell, Ernst & Young, and Nationwide Insurance. 

I myself have been working in the IT field since those college days.  I have worked with a number of clients across the United States; particularly in Toledo, Columbus, Atlanta, Orlando, and Tampa Bay.  I specialize in working with clients, particularly in the government, non-profit, and health care sectors, to determine the best Information Technology solutions for each client's particular needs.

I am pleased to offer this experience to Config.com-- and more importantly to you, our customers.  As you know, Config has been the leading ISP for Portage County and beyond since January, 1994.  We continue to offer our customers the same unparalleled dialup service that we have offered for more than 13 years.  We will continue to offer that service for as long as there is a need.

With the changes to the Internet marketplace in the last few years, however, we find new opportunities to better serve our customers.  The traditional "Day After Thanksgiving" sales on "Black Friday" are being supplemented by "Cyber Monday", as consumers now use the Internet for much more than e-mail.  To respond to these new opportunities, we at Config are announcing several new products:

• Search Engine Optimization. 
  

In December, 1993-- the month before Config.com started-- there were only 623 websites in the entire world, of which only about 29 were .com websites.  [Source:  Matthew Gray of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.]  Most of the remainder were military and academic research sites.  By the way, Config.com is one of the first websites in the world to be used for marketing, as opposed to military or academic research uses.

In 2000, Pandia estimated that there were over 7 million websites.  Today, the same company estimates that there can be anything from over 433 million unique hosts on the Internet, to as many as 30 billion documents (i.e. web pages).  [Source:  Pandia Search Engine News ]  To put that into perspective, Wikipedia reports that there are 6.6 billion people on the planet.  Given that estimate, there may be as many as four or five web pages for every person on the planet!  Needless to say, the traditional three page website linked nowhere isn't going to cut it for even small companies anymore.  What are the chances anyone would find such a site, when it could be said there are 4 or 5 pages out there with each person's name on them?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the answer.  With millions of web pages covering the very message you want to convey to your customers, you need to ensure that your customers are receiving your message-- not your competitors'.  We developed our SEO program organically (what IT experts call "ethical SEO"), and out of necessity to compete in the online marketplace.  We have a website with an effective SEO age of 23 years, one of the highest possible.  (How is this possible?  Ask us!)  This gives us superior performance on search engines, which leads to an increase of customers over traditional marketing.  We can, and we will produce similar results for your business.

• Joombalaia Content Management System

Joe Rinehart, John McFarland, and I developed Joombalaia recently.  Joombalaia is our Joomla!-based Content Management System.  In plain English, CMS is a way to produce more and newer information for a website than the traditional website models of the past.  Most news organizations are using some kind of CMS system:  When you watch the local news, and they direct you to their website for more on the stories they report, chances are they're directing you to a CMS website.

Companies, even small businesses and individuals, can take advantage of this CMS technology.  Truth is, while most search engines give credence to the physical age of a website (see above), they place far more emphasis on how new a website is (which relates to what I call the effective SEO age, but also relates to how frequently the website is updated) and how much information is offered on the site.  CMS helps both of these, by allowing people with websites the ability to easily add and update their sites.  We here at Config like to say that We Make Internet Easy.  This is one reason why.

• NetNewsFlash

Finally today, I'm pleased to announce the pending return of NetNewsFlash, our online subscriber newsletter.  We're revamping the site (with Joombalaia!), and soon you will be able to log on to the website at any time to get the latest news about our company.  

Thank you for your continued patronage of Config.com, Inc.  As we enter the holiday season, we at Config would like to wish good tidings to you and your family.

To your business success,

Jeff (E-mail:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )