About Me

Web

Currently, I work for the University of Pennsylvania Health System, aka Penn Medicine. While my official title is Senior Web Manager and I was hired to manage website projects for the health system, my responsibilities have evolved over the 3+ years that I have been there.

While I still manage high-profile service lines such as Cancer, Cardiology and Orthopaedics, a lot of my time is spent doing search engine optimization (SEO) and quality assurance (QA).

I enjoy learning new things and advancing my knowledge, so I have done extensive research on SEO and Google in order to stay mindful of Google's ever-changing search algorithms. I have re-done many websites recently in order to improve their search engine results placement (SERP). And, most recently, have started researching Web usability and the user experience.

I was instrumental in having Penn Orthopaedics' Sports Medicine section transition from no placement at all in the first 10 pages of Google search results to the middle of page two when searching for sports medicine in Philadelphia. And Penn's Joint Replacement Service has moved up from no placement to the bottom of the first page of results when searching for joint replacement in philadelphia.

The structure of your website is as important as the content. If users have trouble finding what they're looking for, they won't stick around very long. Knowing how to organize your site content in the best, most effective manner and what kinds of elements to include on each page is extremely important to attracting both visitors and search engines. This is where information architecture (IA) comes into play, another skill of mine.

Writing for the Web

Since content is key in high search engine placement, it is important to know how to write for search engines as well as your website's visitors. I have rewritten websites in this fashion. There are many different factors that affect search engine placement (referred to as Google algorithms), and there are many other factors that affect how your content is found and received by your visitors.

Understanding how people read/scan Web pages, what keeps them on your site as opposed to what causes them to leave (called the bounce rate) is important; but, at the same time, knowing what attracts Google and other search engines, and what causes them to rank your site negatively is imperative. These are all things of which I am knowledgable and utilize on a daily basis.

Project Management

I am currently in the master's program at Stevens Institute of Technology, studying management with a concentration in project management. I have managed major website projects at both Penn Medicine and ARAMARK Corp. And I managed the construction and evolution of Valley Forge Military Academy and College's first full website. This experience and my studies have enhanced and advanced my project management skills.

My most recent projects at Penn included the new Heart and Vascular Center website and the new Penn Orthopaedics website. Both of these sites won awards at Greystone.net's 14th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference in November 2010.