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Starting a New SEO Services Business
by Paul K. Gjenvick
http://www.gjenvick-seo.com
If you have ever considered starting a new SEO service
company, there are several steps you can take that will
get things moving in the right direction. I myself
started a company this past year that is already realizing
great results. Not only will an SEO business bring you
amazing rewards, but also in the process, you will learn
how to get higher ranking for your own web site as a bonus.
WHY SEO?
The passion began with my first SEO project for the
Gjenvick-Gj~nvik 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 the major search
engine arena. The best part of all is that I accomplished
these rankings without the 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 the 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 the Academy of Web Specialists
programs offered by Robin Nobles: Essentials in Search
Engine Marketing and Advanced Search Engine Marketing
training. Upon completion of the first course and
receiving certification in search engine marketing
strategies, I decided to take the 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 the company, domain hosting, website content, website
design, keywords, services to offer, pricing, payment
options, and how to be found by the search engines.
IT'S ALL IN THE NAME
After a review of search results from other SEO Services,
I discovered nearly 500,000 sites listed, most of which
were already using the best names for SEO companies.
Fortunately, my last name is unique so the 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 the search engines. It
became apparent that the term Search Engine Optimization
was heavily used which meant the competition was fierce.
Upon researching the term SEO, a third as many results
were returned giving it a much better chance at ranking in
the top 30 search engine results. Based on my research, I
ultimately selected the name Gjenvick SEO Services.
GEOGRAPHIC DIFFERENCES
Next, it would be necessary to distinguish the site from
all others, therefore considering geographic location made
the most sense for getting noticed. The phrase "SEO
Services Atlanta," accomplished the 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 the 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 the index page of the 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 the new website and offer a challenge
to any SEO practitioner.
FINDING THE RIGHT WEB HOSTING COMPANY
The next formidable task was finding a web hosting
company, which was not difficult. Several companies had an
affiliation with the Archives so I gave iPowerWeb the nod,
based on their reasonably priced package deal including
free setup and domain name registration.
CONTENT IS KING
Knowing that content is king and critically important to a
web site, I had already started roughing out some ideas as
to what I would put on the website~ who we were, what we
did, where we were located, how much for services and why
choose Gjenvick SEO Services. To answer these basic
questions, information concerning the company, the
services that were offered, contact information including
address, email and phone number and a website that would
project the right image were presented.
WEB DESIGN FOR THE USERS
I had already accomplished web design in the past, but
frankly I wanted to see if there was a template available
to use. After starting some research on Dreamweaver
templates - it was apparent that there would be no
shortage of websites offering templates for sale. After
some serious shopping time, I chose the Monarch template
for its clean uncluttered design.
MAKING A LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE
The gjenvick-seo.com domain name was now active so it was
time to put all the pieces together although some initial
changes were necessary in the navigational buttons.
Before long though, I was ready to start loading the
website. Having previously drafted out the web page
content, it was only a matter of copying and pasting the
entire web content into the templates. Since the site was
new, no one knew the site existed which allowed some time
to upload the website, making changes under live
conditions. I performed preliminary checks - keyword
analysis, validation of HTML and CSS, making sure images
loaded correctly, and running spell check on all the
pages. To avoid having listings filtered out by Google
and other search engines, I ran a content rating (a self-
rating process) by the ICRA or SafeSurf. With all that
done, it was now time to go live. The quickest route
would be paid inclusion, but the best way was for the
search engines to find me.
GETTING FOUND BY GOOGLE
To start things off, the Gjenvick-Gj~nvik Archives linked
to my new website, providing a trail for the search
engines to follow. I received the first Master SEO Top-10
Rankings Award for 642 top-10 rankings for my work with
the Archives. I also provided a link from the award
displayed at the Archives back to my new awards page on
gjenvick-seo.com. Next I set up another link from the
about us section of the Archives to the home page of the
Gjenvick SEO Services followed by one more link from a
resume that I have always had on the Archives website.
Less than a week later, gjenvick-seo.com was spidered by
Googlebot and within the next few days listings started to
show up in Google, Yahoo and AOL.
THE RESULTS ARE IN
I managed a couple of top 30 rankings although I failed to
rank on the majority of primary search phrases based on
the research with Wordtracker. Next, I went through the
web pages, reviewed their META description and keywords,
and used a keyword analyzer to help develop potential
search phases to find Gjenvick SEO Services. Following, I
compiled several hundred possible search terms. Then it
was time to see if any of the search phrases would place
in the search engine (top 30). Incredibly, I came up with
over 200 search phrases - mostly top 10 rankings in the
three major search engines. Gjenvick SEO Services was now
open for business.
IN CONCLUSION
For those interested in starting an SEO company the
following overall steps should be considered:
1. Initially do as much reading and research about the SEO
market that you can get your hands on; take courses
offered by reputable people so you have a good foundation.
2. Prepare yourself by choosing a good domain name that
will get noticed. In addition select an excellent hosting
company that you feel comfortable with.
3. Make sure you have some good content to include on your
site, as well as keywords, services you're going to offer,
pricing and payment options and how you're going to be
found by the search engines.
4. Perform preliminary checks to include keyword analysis,
validation of HTML and CSS.
5. Make sure images load correctly and be sure to run
spell check on all the pages.
6. Have your content rated by the ICRA or SafeSurf so
search engines don't filter out your content.
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