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Search Engine Marketing - John
Alexander Interviews SEO author Susan O'Neil about the
early days.
Robin Nobles was the very
first person to develop a structured series of
comprehensive courses and lessons which are recognized and
approved by the US educational system for training people
in search engine marketing skills. Robin Nobles celebrates
her 6th year in the online Web training business with her
ever popular SEO certification courses at http://www.onlinewebtraining.com.
Hattiesburg, MS (PRWEB)
July 15, 2004 -- Today we bring you the 4th in a series of
interviews conducted by Robin's business partner John
Alexander, who is looking up some of Robin's very earliest
online students and asking them about their recollections
of what it was like building SEO skills way back in 1998
and how far they've come in the SEO industry since then.
John Alexander:
"Welcome Susan O'Neil, I'd really like to thank you
for taking the time to speak with us today. Susan, you had
some background in marketing before you started into the
search engine marketing industry. Could you tell us a
little about your background and how you first got
thinking about search engine marketing?"
Susan O'Neil: "I began
my career in marketing in 1975 as Director of Public
Relations with a symphony orchestra. From there I went to
Wall Street where I was National Advertising Manager for
Paine Webber. When I moved to New Hampshire, I opened a
public relations agency, which is where I first got
involved with the Internet when a client company launched
an e-mail service."
John Alexander: "Could
you take us back and share some memories of the early
days? How did you first find Robin Nobles online courses
in the beginning?"
Susan O'Neil: "I was
helping a few of my PR clients with text for their
websites and began experimenting with Meta tags and
content alterations. The more I learned about the power of
optimization, the more I realized that I didn't know it
all. That's when I searched for an online SEO course and
found Robin Nobles. Her expertise and her passion for her
work inspired me then and it still inspires me now."
John Alexander:
"That's very nice and I know exactly what you mean.
Could you tell us how long after your initial training was
it, before you began realizing your true SEO skills and
begin helping people with their Web visibility
challenges?"
Susan O'Neil: "I had a
good deal of early success back them by just applying the
basics that I'd picked up through trial and error. This
was easy to do in the mid to late 90's. However, once I
finished Robin's course in 1998, I was able to implement a
more aggressive program that could better serve the most
competitive types of e-commerce sites. Also, through Robin
and her students, I found a forum that allowed me to share
and learn from peers -- so important in the then-emerging
industry. Previous to that, doing SEO was a pretty lonely
job since few realized this field of marketing even
existed."
John Alexander: "That
is very interesting to see how far this goes back. Robin's
vision for a forum has always been to create an ideal
place where people can share information safely together
and she has always been so good at bringing the very best
talents out in people. I should mention just for our
readers sake, that her newest efforts in this regard just
recently has been to fashion an excellent networking
community called the World Resource Center at http://www.sew-wrc.com."
John Alexander:
"Susan, I was reading a copy of your book which you
co-authored with Robin Nobles and noted that in the
preface, it says that you two actually wrote
"Maximize Web site Traffic" without ever
actually meeting in person. Can you tell us how this came
about?"
Susan O'Neil: "As I
helped more and more of my PR clients move onto the Web
through optimized websites, I realized that there was a
need for a corporate, comprehensive approach to providing
professional SEO services to America's companies. I
decided to create such a company and, in 1998, closed my
PR agency and launched @Web Site Publicity. In order to
give my new company quick credibility and exposure, I
decided to write a book on SEO - a "how to"
book. Knowing how time-consuming the writing would be, I
asked Robin to share the endeavor with me."
John Alexander: "And
this was the beginning of this new book?"
Susan O'Neil: "Yes,
she agreed to the idea, so we divvied up the chapters and
started writing. We didn't meet until it was time to do
the final edit. Robin flew up from Mississippi to a ski
chalet in Vermont where we typed and talked non-stop for a
week. Robin brought a great depth of specific SEO
experience which mixed beautifully with my years of
marketing experience and the result was a book that,
outdated as it is, still brings us fan mail!"
John Alexander: "That
is very cool! Now as you know, last month just as of June
29, 2004 Robin Nobles has been celebrating her sixth year
in the SEO Training industry with her online (www.onlinewebtraining.com)
instructional courses in search engine optimization.
Looking back to the early days when you first decided to
study search engine marketing, can you describe what your
SEO skillset has meant to you personally? How much have
these skills meant to you?
Susan O'Neil: "Because
of my SEO skills and my marketing expertise, I and my
staff have been able to help hundreds of small to large
businesses succeed on the Internet. This remains exciting
and gratifying. Our clients were also better able to ride
out the dot.com bust because our approach to providing SEO
services has been to focus on the long term
"health" of a website, which means building
quality content continuously. Robin in her teaching and,
together, in our book - we've never strayed from the
truism that "content is king" and that continues
to serve my clients well."
John Alexander: "Can
you tell our readers about one of your earliest SEO
success stories and what it felt like the first time you
made a real difference to someone's business online?"
Susan O'Neil: "A
longtime PR client of mine is a publisher of fine
nonfiction for children. This company was early in
recognizing the power of the Internet and so invested in a
delightful, informative website that also offered
subscriptions to their magazines. However, after spending
the money to build the website, they didn't get any
visitors. I liken it to giving birth after a long labor to
a beautiful new baby that no one comes to admire. Aware of
their concerns, I starting tweaking tags, cleaning up
code, and adding content and their site began to take off.
That early first client has remained with my company all
these years and has been generous in their recommending of
us to others as they continue to grow their online
business."
John Alexander: "What
word of wisdom or advice do you have for any of our
readers that might be considering building a new career in
search engine marketing these days?"
Susan O'Neil: "I don't
think you can be in marketing today without at least an
understanding of search marketing concepts, even if you
don't build the code and write the content. As this
"new" science of SEO has become not only
universally accepted but consistently praised for its
cost-effective strategies, there will continue to be
opportunities for people who can apply consistent,
aggressive, yet ethical strategies for growing online
success, both in-house for e-commerce companies and with
SEO/SEM agencies like mine. In fact, my agency is growing
still and when I hire someone who may have a great
marketing background but be new to SEO, I have them start
their learning curve with one of Robin's courses because
no one can lay out the ground work better."
John Alexander: "How
nicely spoken, Susan."
Susan O'Neil: "The
other word of advice I have is an old one: don't believe
everything you read. SEO newsletters and forums are great
starting points and can be entertaining, but the people
with the best information don't go giving it away.
Whatever you hear or read, never apply a strategy to a
client's site without thoroughly testing it first
extensively. We developed our own E- Commerce Lab for just
this purpose."
John Alexander:
"Finally in closing, I'll ask if you have any other
favourite online resources you would care to mention for
the benefit of our readers?
Susan O'Neil: "As my
company has grown, my responsibilities have shifted from
trying to discern the optimum number of words on a
Google-friendly page or the best marketing spin in a title
tag, to focusing on the bigger picture, so I'm not a good
one to recommend the best SEO reading today. Instead, as I
lead my team into our 7th year of business, I'm reading
the Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the UK's Financial
Times, always trying to look beyond the bend - to try to
see where business in general is going and the Internet
specifically. To keep our clients ahead of their
competition, we need to keep ahead of ours.
John Alexander: "That
is so very true. Well, I want to thank you again so much
Susan O'Neil, for taking time today to share some of your
rememberances of the early days of search engine marketing
and telling us how you first got in to the business. It
has been fascinating to speaking to you and I'll just take
this opportunity wish you the very greatest of ongoing
success in the future."
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