Hello,

Before we delve into optimization and what it is all about, I'd like to take a brief moment to introduce myself, and lay out what this course is all about, and what you will accomplish with this knowledge.

I will take it for granted that you are either in business already, or are about to go into business online and are trying to get better listings for your website.

This is a course in SEO, NOT in HTML. I won't teach you what Headline Tags are, but I'll teach you their importance in SEO. It is expected that you have a basic knowledge of HTML and can create/write your own web pages and FTP, or publish, them to your website.

I began working on computers in 1975. They were huge back then and took up quite a bit of space. My online life started in the late 1980s when I began frequenting local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's or Message Board Systems) which were the local precursor to the Internet. All of these BBS systems would connect to a central hub where they would exchange information and relay messages. This was the early development of the Internet. I dabbled with some of the early Internet Networks like Prodigy and over the years had a great deal of fun.

Somewhere along the way in the mid 1990s my local phone company offered Internet access. I had to have it. In 1997 I first logged on to the actual Internet, myself, and was introduced to my new life, as it is today.

It seemed that everyone who was online back then had a free website at GeoCities, Tripod or whatever. Of course, coming from a computer background anyway, I had to have one myself. So I got involved and began to learn HTML. Some time went by and I had taken the plunge and purchased my first domain. $100! Yikes! But I did it anyway, and got myself a place to host it for another $20 monthly. I was learning HTML and having a ball! It was July of 1997.

While surfing around one day I saw a banner ad at the top of one of web pages I visited. It touted how I could make money with my own website. Well geez, (honest ... I really talk like that) I have a website! I gotta try this!

So I clicked through and it turned out to be a website about dating. Personals, classified type ads telling about yourself and trying to hook up with someone else looking for a new relationship. I signed up with the company and put a banner ad on my website. I promptly forgot about the money making promise as I didn't have any faith in this at all. None. Not a drop.

Some weeks later I got an envelope in the mail from that company. It contained a check for $19.95 which was my commission on the sale of one membership at their site.

I looked in disbelief at this check. It was real though. I deposited it into my bank account.

After my head stopped spinning and the 1960s cosmic dust settled I took to wondering how I ever got anyone to actually go to their website. I wasn't really sure how many people even visited my site or where they came from or how they found me. (See how to track these things on the SEO Tools page.

I analyzed some things and found out that I was getting a lot of visitors to some of the pages at my website. I mean hundreds of them every day. I looked at the keywords and where my pages were listed on the engine called InfoSeek.com. I figured out through some basic analysis of the other pages there that a big part of the reason some pages where listed above other pages was the number of times the keyword was repeated on the page.

This was the first step I ever took in optimization. Back then all you had to do was put your keyword on your page one more time than the other guy and you would be listed above the other guy in the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs).

It was easy to test your work on InfoSeek because they indexed and catalogued your site instantly. You could add your URL and instantly show up in the searches. You could analyze any changes and resubmit and immediately see the results! InfoSeek was a very popular engine as well and sent a huge amount of traffic to my site. Unfortunately, InfoSeek no longer exists.

I got to work and created a bunch of pages targeting different keywords, all relevant to personal ads. I instantly got #1 positions across lots of pages. I kept at it and played and tinkered and made page after page after page.

A few months later my income had soared from the initial $20, to averaging around $2,000 monthly. I sometimes ran up to $3,000 monthly.

At one point in time I had my site in the search results on Excite for every position in the Top-30.

These days are now long gone. It is not that easy anymore. And you have to spend lots of real time tweaking your site to get it show high in the ranks. All those algorithms have been worked on and improved upon and now it is a very difficult job to get listed high in the ranks.

I have read and read and read all I could find about SEO on the Internet. Much of that contradicts itself, which isn't really a surprise. I have subscribed to countless email lists and even invested about $70 into a course by a couple who were supposed to be very well informed. I learned more from thinking about it for an hour. I optimized their pockets.

I presently am working for one of the better SEO firms out there, who, for the sake of privacy (and me not losing my job) will remain nameless. I have many clients of which some I have really done a good job for. Well, I've done a good job for them all, but some sites make it up there ... some don't. There are just too many variables for every single site out there to make it to the top. You, knowing your site and business better than anyone, should be able to work past the obstacles put in my path. Some of my clients won't even allow me access to their site. I have to email them changes. It works, sort of, it's not at all spontaneous and they lose because SEO work is extremely spontaneous. It also takes forever this way.

The issue of not being able to get into the top listings should not apply to you, optimizing your own site. For me, it happens when my clients have optimized their sites previously with an SEO Firm that uses blackhat or unethical and unscrupulous methods. Things can linger in the background, penalties can be placed against your site, many, many things can be just plain wrong. Having complete control and knowledge of your site, you should not find these issues holding you back.

So the reason I am writing this book is because I know there are a lot of people out there, like myself, who want to get their websites up in the ranks. I know the information is hard to come by, often contradictory and nowhere could I find a plan that actually put you on the path to optimizing a site with facts and figures and not just some basic ideas.

Well, this is a nice story I guess, but it's not teaching you about optimization. It is however letting you know that I've been around for a while, (a very long time in Internet years) have had some experience, and hopefully allows you to have a little faith in me. You'll need it.

So, let's get on with the program!