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 Internet. This remains exciting and gratifying. Our clients were also better able to ride out dot.com bust because our approach to providing SEO services has been to focus on 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 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 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 power of Internet and so invested in a delightful, informative website that also offered subscriptions to their magazines. However, after spending money to build 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 code and write 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 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 people with 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 benefit of our readers?

Susan O'Neil: "As my company has grown, my responsibilities have shifted from trying to discern optimum number of words on a Google-friendly page or best marketing spin in a title tag, to focusing on bigger picture, so I'm not a good one to recommend best SEO reading today. Instead, as I lead my team into our 7th year of business, I'm reading Wall Street Journal, Forbes and UK's Financial Times, always trying to look beyond bend - to try to see where business in general is going and 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 early days of search engine marketing and telling us how you first got in to business. It has been fascinating to speaking to you and I'll just take this opportunity wish you very greatest of ongoing success in future."

This interview has been brought to you courtesy of John Alexander, Co-director of Training and Education at Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) and Online Web Training(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com).