The Origins of Man…or 8 Awesome Search Bloggers
Having now officially been at KoMarketing for two years (Happy Anniversary to me!) and in the search world for 3 1/2, I started thinking, “how the heck did I end up doing this?” Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and I love search but when it comes down to it, I basically just fell into it.
Am I unique in that sense? I don’t think so. With search everyone has their own story of how they got started. It’s not the kind of industry where you hear people say, “Ever since I was ten I wanted to do PPC”.
I decided to ask around and see how some other people got into search and social media. I asked a few of my favorite bloggers to finish the statement, “I got into internet marketing (search marketing, social media, etc) …..”.
Here is what they had to say and I was not one bit disappointed:
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aka theNanny, Shana is a social media specialist who writes for Social Desire and Collective thoughts. Also rocks a killer hair style:
My first introduction to Social Media was in 2006 when I added a blog to my Preschool Curriculum eCommerce Website. My website which had been ranking #1 in Google for the term “Preschool Curriculum” for more than 3 years began dropping. I had read that adding a blog and writing posts regularly could help improve my Google ranking. That was my first taste of Social Media. Then, in 2007 I had read about Social Networking and the different sites available. I started to mess around with Delicious, MyBlogLog, and StumbleUpon (to name a few). StumbleUpon was what did it for me in regards to falling madly, deeply in love with Social Media. I love the fact that I could discover sites that I never would have found if it wasn’t for StumbleUpon…. It wasn’t all about Google Search anymore. I could discover sites and pages that real human beings thought were “top choice”. And, then I discovered Sphinn. Sphinn is a Social Networking site dedicated to SEO, Marketing and Social Media. I loved the articles I found there, but mostly I loved the Community that was there. Sphinn taught me what Social Media is all about….. COMMUNITY. So, as you can see…. Me getting involved with Social Media was for a combination of different reasons. But, the reason that I spend so much time participating in Social Media activities is because of the Conversations and the members of the Communities. |
 Aaron Chronister |
aka TheMadHat gives SEO and SEM the much needed (and often deserved) kick in the rear it needs. He does everything from SEO to domaining to affiliate marketing and his posts can always brighten my day:
…well because someone had to sell Viagra and I felt obligated to answer the frantic call of old men everywhere. Actually, I came from an engineering background and happened to fall into it when a friend inquired why she couldn’t find her site in Google. Then I sold some Viagra. |
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aka onreact, Tad is Germany’s SEO expert. He writes for several blogs including SEO2.0 and is a prominent face on Sphinn. Plus he wears a sweet hat:
I got onto the Web and into blogging, SEO & social media because I want to change the world. To change the world you need to be able to reach out to large audiences. I wanted to do that via the Internet. It’s possible, Obama proved it. |
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aka UtahSEOPro is a jack of all trades doing web dev, web design and of course SEO and Social Media. He also writes some damn informative posts:
I got into Internet marketing because I was sick of making Websites that nobody could find and wanted to broaden my skillset. After getting into Internet marketing, and getting paid a whole hell of a lot more, I focused on that alone and now Web design and development is more of a hobby. Internet marketing has taken me to completely new places, given me new opportunities, and created new relationships in my life. It’s one thing for a client to be satisfied with your work but it’s another joy when you can put money into their pockets. |
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aka Dazzlin’ Donna is one of my favorite SEO Chicks. She also writes on SEO-Scoop and is not only smart but is always looking to showcase the community. Oh…she also can be freaking hilarious:
I got into the search industry years ago when I got laid off and couldn’t find another comparable job. At that point, I decided to create a few ColdFusion programs (I was a CF programmer back then) and see if I could sell them on the Internet. It didn’t take long for me to realize that if I wanted sales, I needed traffic, and if I wanted traffic, I needed to rank well in search engines for relevant queries. That led me to researching what it would take to accomplish that, and I discovered the irresistible lure of SEO…and the rest is history. |
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I am a little biased because I work with Derek but he’s a smart guy who can put together a hell of a blog post. Derek writes for our blog and Cape Cod SEO. He’s also kind of fantasy baseball aficionado:
… because it seems like a new and exciting challenge and opportunity in a largely undeveloped industry (I am pretty sure we were not even thinking of search engine optimization or PPC as an entire industry at that point). |
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I think everyone who knows search marketing knows Jill Whalen. She is everywhere, speaking at conferences, running SEMNE and writing the High Rankings newsletter. Jill is awesome and we in Boston are lucky to have her close:
I got into search engine optimization because I wanted my parenting website to be found more easily in the search engines back in 1993! Nobody else was really talking about it at the time, so I had to figure it out myself. Once I did, I couldn’t get enough! |
*A HUGE thank you to everyone who responded. You guys are great bloggers, speakers, internet marketers and I am fortunate to be able to learn from all of you.