Why SEO?
The passion began with my first SEO project for the Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives; a large privately held family archives located in Atlanta, Georgia and Trondheim, Norway. My success in search engine optimization resulted in well over 1,000 top 10 rankings in the major search engine arena. The best part of all is that I accomplished these rankings without the benefit of any formal SEO training. Having done so well at my first SEO project, I began thinking about becoming an SEO Specialist.
On Becoming an SEO Specialist
My first step was in reading articles on the SEO profession where I learned that it was in its infancy as there were no formal standards or knowledge base that existed for practitioners. So, in June 2003, I finally decided to take a course called Master Search Engine Optimization Competencies for Web Developers (MSEOC). Several months later, I thought another course would be in order – this time I chose the Academy of Web Specialists programs offered by Robin Nobles: Essentials in Search Engine Marketing and Advanced Search Engine Marketing training. Upon completion of the first course and receiving certification in search engine marketing strategies, I decided to take the plunge and start my own SEO Company.
Essentials to consider before starting your SEO Company
Naturally there are a lot of initial preliminaries that needed to be worked out which included a domain name, name of the company, domain hosting, website content, website design, keywords, services to offer, pricing, payment options, and how to be found by the search engines.
It’s all in the name
After a review of search results from other SEO Services, I discovered nearly 500,000 sites listed, most of which were already using the best names for SEO companies. Fortunately, my last name is unique so the domain name of Gjenvick-seo.com was a neat and simple choice. I then researched Google and Wordtracker to determine a company name that would draw traffic from the search engines. It became apparent that the term Search Engine Optimization was heavily used which meant the competition was fierce. Upon researching the term SEO, a third as many results were returned giving it a much better chance at ranking in the top 30 search engine results. Based on my research, I ultimately selected the name Gjenvick SEO Services.
Geographic Differences
Next, it would be necessary to distinguish the site from all others, therefore considering geographic location made the most sense for getting noticed. The phrase “SEO Services Atlanta,” accomplished the goal. Currently, gjenvick-seo.com ranks first and second of 12,200 listings in Google.
Ranking Awards?
Having been successful in obtaining many top 10 rankings for the Archives, I began wondering if there were any awards for reaching that status. I found that J. K. Bowman’s Spider Food offered “Recognition for Your Top 10 Ranking.” Their specific criteria required that ranking had to be on the index page of the site. Consequently, after giving it some thought, search engine optimization awards seemed like a good idea. As an added bonus it would also draw traffic to the new website and offer a challenge to any SEO practitioner.
Finding the right Web Hosting Company
The next formidable task was finding a web hosting company, which was not difficult. Several companies had an affiliation with the Archives so I gave iPowerWeb the nod, based on their reasonably priced package deal including free setup and domain name registration.
Content is King
Knowing that content is king and critically important to a web site, I had already started roughing out some ideas as to what I would put on the website… who we were, what we did, where we were located, how much for services and why choose Gjenvick SEO Services. To answer these basic questions, information in regard to the company, the services that were offered, contact information including address, email and phone number and a website that would project the right image were presented.
Web Design for the Users
I had already accomplished web design in the past, but frankly I wanted to see if there was a template available to use. After starting some research on Dreamweaver templates – it was apparent that there would be no shortage of websites offering templates for sale. After some serious shopping time, I chose the Monarch template for its clean uncluttered design.
Making a list and checking it twice
The gjenvick-seo.com domain name was now active so it was time to put all the pieces together although some initial changes were necessary in the navigational buttons. Before long though, I was ready to start loading the website. Having previously drafted out the web page content, it was only a matter of copying and pasting the entire web content into the templates. Since the site was new, no one knew the site existed which allowed some time to upload the website, making changes under live conditions. I performed preliminary checks – keyword analysis, validation of HTML and CSS, making sure images loaded correctly, and running spell check on all the pages. To avoid having listings filtered out by Google and other search engines, I ran a content rating (a self-rating process) by the ICRA or SafeSurf. With all that done, it was now time to go live. The quickest route would be paid inclusion, but the best way was for the search engines to find me.