Why SEO? The passion began with my first SEO project for Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives; a large privately held family archives located in Atlanta, Georgia and Trondheim, Norway. My success in search engine optimization resulted in well over 1,000 top 10 rankings in major search engine arena. The best part of all is that I accomplished these rankings without benefit of any formal SEO training. Having done so well at my first SEO project, I began thinking about becoming an SEO Specialist.

On Becoming an SEO Specialist My first step was in reading articles on SEO profession where I learned that it was in its infancy as there were no formal standards or knowledge base that existed for practitioners. So, in June 2003, I finally decided to take a course called Master Search Engine Optimization Competencies for Web Developers (MSEOC). Several months later, I thought another course would be in order - this time I chose Academy of Web Specialists programs offered by Robin Nobles: Essentials in Search Engine Marketing and Advanced Search Engine Marketing training. Upon completion of first course and receiving certification in search engine marketing strategies, I decided to take plunge and start my own SEO Company.

Essentials to consider before starting your SEO Company Naturally there are a lot of initial preliminaries that needed to be worked out which included a domain name, name of company, domain hosting, website content, website design, keywords, services to offer, pricing, payment options, and how to be found by search engines.

It's all in name After a review of search results from other SEO Services, I discovered nearly 500,000 sites listed, most of which were already using best names for SEO companies. Fortunately, my last name is unique so domain name of Gjenvick-seo.com was a neat and simple choice. I then researched Google and Wordtracker to determine a company name that would draw traffic from search engines. It became apparent that term Search Engine Optimization was heavily used which meant competition was fierce. Upon researching term SEO, a third as many results were returned giving it a much better chance at ranking in top 30 search engine results. Based on my research, I ultimately selected name Gjenvick SEO Services.

Geographic Differences Next, it would be necessary to distinguish site from all others, therefore considering geographic location made most sense for getting noticed. The phrase "SEO Services Atlanta," accomplished goal. Currently, gjenvick-seo.com ranks first and second of 12,200 listings in Google.

Ranking Awards? Having been successful in obtaining many top 10 rankings for Archives, I began wondering if there were any awards for reaching that status. I found that J. K. Bowman's Spider Food offered "Recognition for Your Top 10 Ranking." Their specific criteria required that ranking had to be on index page of site. Consequently, after giving it some thought, search engine optimization awards seemed like a good idea. As an added bonus it would also draw traffic to new website and offer a challenge to any SEO practitioner.

Finding right Web Hosting Company The next formidable task was finding a web hosting company, which was not difficult. Several companies had an affiliation with Archives so I gave iPowerWeb nod, based on their reasonably priced package deal including free setup and domain name registration.

Drawing a comparison from development of a human infant - human race has just commenced to develop its neural system.

The Internet fulfils all functions of Nervous System in body and is, both functionally and structurally, pretty similar. It is decentralized, redundant (each part can serve as functional backup in case of malfunction). It hosts information which is accessible through various paths, it contains a memory function, it is multimodal (multimedia - textual, visual, audio and animation).

I believe that comparison is not superficial and that studying functions of brain (from infancy to adulthood) is likely to shed light on future of Net itself. The Net - exactly like nervous system - provides pathways for transport of goods and services - but also of memes and information, their processing, modeling, and integration.

A. The Collective Computer

Carrying metaphor of "a collective brain" further, we would expect processing of information to take place on Internet, rather than inside end-user’s hardware (the same way that information is processed in brain, not in eyes). Desktops will receive results and communicate with Net to receive additional clarifications and instructions and to convey information gathered from their environment (mostly, from user).

Put differently:

In future, servers will contain not only information (as they do today) - but also software applications. The user of an application will not be forced to buy it. He will not be driven into hardware-related expenditures to accommodate ever growing size of applications. He will not find himself wasting his scarce memory and computing resources on passive storage. Instead, he will use a browser to call a central computer. This computer will contain needed software, broken to its elements (=applets, small applications). Anytime user wishes to use one of functions of application, he will siphon it off central computer. When finished - he will "return" it. Processing speeds and response times will be such that user will not feel at all that he is not interacting with his own software (the question of ownership will be very blurred). This technology is available and it provoked a heated debated about future shape of computing industry as a whole (desktops - really power packs - or network computers, a little more than dumb terminals). Access to online applications are already offered to corporate users by ASPs (Application Service Providers).

In last few years, scientists have harnessed combined power of online PC's to perform astounding feats of distributed parallel processing. Millions of PCs connected to net co-process signals from outer space, meteorological data, and solve complex equations. This is a prime example of a collective brain in action.

B. The Intranet - a Logical Extension of Collective Computer

LANs (Local Area Networks) are no longer a rarity in corporate offices. WANs (wide Area Networks) are used to connect geographically dispersed organs of same legal entity (branches of a bank, daughter companies of a conglomerate, a sales force). Many LANs and WANs are going wireless.

The wireless intranet/extranet and LANs are wave of future. They will gradually eliminate their fixed line counterparts. The Internet offers equal, platform-independent, location-independent and time of day - independent access to corporate memory and nervous system. Sophisticated firewall security applications protect privacy and confidentiality of intranet from all but most determined and savvy crackers.

The Intranet is an inter-organizational communication network, constructed on platform of Internet and it, therefore, enjoys all its advantages. The extranet is open to clients and suppliers as well.

The company's server can be accessed by anyone authorized, from anywhere, at any time (with local - rather than international - communication costs). The user can leave messages (internal e-mail or v-mail), access information - proprietary or public - from it, and participate in "virtual teamwork" (see next chapter).

The development of measures to safeguard server routed inter-organizational communication (firewalls) is solution to one of two obstacles to institutionalization of Intranets. The second problem is limited bandwidth which does not permit efficient transfer of audio (not to mention video).

It is difficult to conduct video conferencing through Internet. Even voices of discussants who use internet phones (IP telephony) come out (though very slightly) distorted.

All this did not prevent 95% of Fortune 1000 from installing intranet. 82% of rest intend to install one by end of this year. Medium to big size American firms have 50-100 intranet terminals per every internet one.

One of greatest advantages of intranet is ability to transfer documents between various parts of an organization. Consider Visa: it pushed 2 million documents per day internally in 1996.

An organization equipped with an intranet can (while protected by firewalls) give its clients or suppliers access to non-classified correspondence, or inventory systems. Many B2B exchanges and industry-specific purchasing management systems are based on extranets.

C. The Transport of Information - Mail and Chat

The Internet (its e-mail function) is eroding traditional mail. 90% of customers with on-line access use e-mail from time to time and 60% work with it regularly. More than 2 billion messages traverse internet daily.

E-mail applications are available as freeware and are included in all browsers. Thus, Internet has completely assimilated what used to be a separate service, to extent that many people make mistake of thinking that e-mail is a feature of Internet.

The internet will do to phone calls what it has done to mail. Already there are applications (Intel's, Vocaltec's, Net2Phone) which enable user to conduct a phone conversation through his computer. The voice quality has improved. The discussants can cut into each others words, argue and listen to tonal nuances. Today, parties (two or more) engaging in conversation must possess same software and same (computer) hardware. In very near future, computer-to-regular phone applications will eliminate this requirement. And, again, simultaneous multi-modality: user can talk over phone, see his party, send e-mail, receive messages and transfer documents - without obstructing flow of conversation.