My foray into the world of SEO was almost by accident though there’s a bit of a logical progression when I think about it.

I first went online back in 1996 at a disability conference in Auckland, New Zealand. Telecom New Zealand was showcasing the wonders of the ‘Internet’ with their product: Xtra. It lived at Xtra.co.nz and was (at the time) an imagemap of a little ‘town’ which served as a portal for news, sports, weather and other such information.

The booth attendant asked me what I wanted to do with the ‘Internet’ and I had no clue. I tinkered around with the Xtra portal and landed on Yahoo.com. I found the chat room section and started making friends in no time.

Speeds were at 28.8 and 33.6kbps but it wasn’t an issue at the time – the whole idea of the Internet as a place to get info on everything at any time was just too amazing for my young mind!

I insisted we ‘get the Internet’ at home and when a new Windows 95 equipped computer landed at my door in late 1996, we were ready to go online!

Naturally once you start going online daily, you begin to wonder how to create your own website and I used Netscape Composer to create my first website. I used Yahoo’s free hosting and my site remained online for a few years. Admittedly, it wasn’t much more than a collection of great links, photos and ramblings but it did sport an impressive array of tiled backgrounds, colourful and unique page headings courtesy of Paint Shop Pro 5 and of course, animated gifs.

I kept up with web design for the ‘fun of it’ during  high school and uni years and began to dabble in some asp.net and php but this was extremely basic. And I was still using Paint Shop Pro 5 but had upgraded to Macromedia Dreamweaver!

In December 2003 I secured a position with Dark Blue Sea, an Internet media firm in Brisbane as part of their Customer Care team. I provided support for clients using their 4 products: ROAR.com and PageSeeker.com (PPC search engines), Fabulous.com (wholesale and domain monetisation platform) and Dark Blue (affiliate program). Dark Blue Sea was bought out by the Photon Group in 2007.

It is here that I developed a great interest in SEO courtesy of an SEO competition run by Dark Blue for the phrase ‘nigritude ultra marine’. The goal was to be ranked #1 for that phrase by competition close and whilst I was unable to participate, I did watch the competition keenly. Back then, meta keywords, stuffing of content and all sorts of other dodgy things were still used to somehow help with rankings and the one thing I questioned about it all was the validity of such techniques, since as a corporate entity or business, you wouldn’t be able to resort to those sorts of tactics without ruining your image. You would have to seek out more professional, long term strategies in order to rank well in search engines.

When I completed uni, I found a job in Sydney with 247 Real Media (now Outrider) and actually ventured into the PPC game. There was scope to move into the SEO department (where my passion lay) but at the time, PPC was hot and I worked on great campaigns for News Limited where I developed my skills in keyword research and copy writing. Despite the experience and fun of it all, I felt SEO was the future since most people I talked to simply ignored the paid ads. Back then the concept of social media was not so well developed or prominent but people were still trying to grasp the c0ncept of using the Internet to market their business.

I moved back to Brisbane in 2007 to join a Web Design and Internet Marketing company called Diggy and successfully managed one of their 5 branches for almost 3 years. This role was extremely varied but had plenty of web design and SEO to keep me happy. This is where I met Dan Petrovic, my mentor and friend who helped me focus my energies on ‘marketing websites’. Under Dan’s wing, I learnt a great deal more about SEO, far more than what you would read in a book or at a seminar. His patient and practical approach to SEO is the reason why he is the best in the biz and I consider myself very fortunate to have been schooled by a world-renowned industry expert. When Dan setup an official entity in the form of DEJAN SEO, I had to join him as I would be able to work day in and day out on SEO campaigns in an environment that fostered creativity and allowed for a great deal more experimentation and learning with SEO.

I’ve been at DEJAN SEO since December 2009, I currently manage 80+ campaigns for small to medium businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Israel, USA and Japan. I work with about 35 talented link builders and digital marketing strategists. SEO is at the core of what we do and I spend my days auditing websites and either making the necessary onsite SEO changes or guiding my clients on how to do so. I also assist with link building, help identify opportunities for online growth and I even work hard in the conversion optimisation space because a #1 ranking means squat if it doesn’t translate into sales.

There are many elements to a successful digital strategy and it needs to be comprehensive if you want results, such as:

- a solid website that converts well and ranks well

- a mobile site

- a strong social media presence

- consistent email marketing

and even a mobile app if it’s relevant and appropriate!

But I believe SEO is as vital as any other component and forms the corner stone of a solid online presence. Pete Williams of Deloitte Digital fame might disagree (he reckons it went out with body shirts) but I’d like to think that there seems little point in worrying about chandeliers and feature walls if your foundation is falling apart.

SEO FTW.