Hattiesburg, MS (PRWEB) July 15, 2004 -- Today we bring you 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 SEO industry since then.

John Alexander: "Welcome Susan O'Neil, I'd really like to thank you for taking time to speak with us today. Susan, you had some background in marketing before you started into 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 Internet when a client company launched an e-mail service."

John Alexander: "Could you take us back and share some memories of early days? How did you first find Robin Nobles online courses in 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 power of optimization, 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 basics that I'd picked up through trial and error. This was easy to do in 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 writing would be, I asked Robin to share endeavor with me."

John Alexander: "And this was beginning of this new book?"

Susan O'Neil: "Yes, she agreed to idea, so we divvied up chapters and started writing. We didn't meet until it was time to do 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 result was a book that, outdated as it is, still brings us fan mail!"