CEO and SEO Strategist. I lead the team, manage the business and focus on development of every area of the company. I develop custom business and marketing strategies for our clients and our own brand. I study and implement ethical and effective marketing strategies for our clients. I care about quality. I think design and marketing go hand in hand. I aim to clean up the web and make it a better place.Â
I landed my first gig in 2005 at a local marketing agency that focused on link building. Before that job I had tried my hand a variety of career paths. I had most recently been a restaurant manager but was tired of the long hours and late nights. It was tough work but it taught me a lot. When I started over I literally knew nothing about the internet or how Google worked. I was hired as a billing assistant. However, I quickly noticed other ways I could help the company and began learning all that I could about online marketing. It was an exciting time. I never wanted to become stagnant and this industry is anything but that. I fell in love with the industry and it's ability to continually push me to learn and grow. I guess you could say it was fate, in a way.
In 2009, my partner Chris and I started Eminent SEO after deciding there was a better way to do digital marketing. Over the last decade we have evolved into a multi-channel marketing agency that specializes in not only SEO, but quality website design, brand development and full multi-channel marketing campaigns as well. This mixture of data driven marketing and creative work gives me life! I absolutely love our team, our work and being a part of this exciting, fast paced industry.
As one of my favorite authors, Tom Peters, says: Evolve or die.
Well, where do I begin? When I started doing SEO in 2005 working with Google algorithms was much simpler. A lot of the variables that we all consider the standard for SEO today were not even part of our work. We didn't need a quality website, we needed links. High end links. Rented links. Permanent links. And then a mix of links. It wasn't until Google finally figured out a way to algorithmically penalize websites for paid links that we had to start to really worry about the on-page SEO. Even then it was all spammy content strategies all focused on keyword stuffing and creating the most content possible, even if it was crappy.
Those days are gone, ya'll. SEO is now an umbrella term for a wide array of techniques and practices. "SEO" is still links, but now it's deeply researched website and content strategies. High quality website design and development to make you fast, mobile and user friendly. On-page optimization for meta data, headers, internal links, images, schema markups, etc. It's brand asset development. It's outreach. It's social media engagement. It's still link building but it's now link earning, which requires market place analysis. It's so many things.
But, what I have noticed is people don't believe in it as much anymore. It's like because it's hard they think it's impossible. Well, I'm here to tell you something different my friend. If you think SEO is too hard it's because you're doing it wrong.
Spend time with my man, my kids and family. They are everything. When I have free time (what's that?) I do enjoy a wide variety of creative activities. I recently took up painting. So, that's fun. I also like: singing, writing, cooking, crafting with the kids, creating digital art and photography. I love to read, do yoga and listen to podcasts on business and marketing.
