October 9, 2006 There are a number of big names in the SEO and online marketing industry. A lot of times I throw them around as answers to «people I would like to meet» or «what source do you have for this information?» More often than not, though, there are a handful of names that continue to come into play. After about 2 years of all of your funny looks, I thought it was time I let you just a little further into my world. So, here are a few introduction. Oh, and a lot of «SEO Experts» claim to know these people on a personal level so as to boost their credibility in hopes of making a sale. This is certainly not the case most often, and especially in mine.

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan became involved in SEO, unbeknownst to him, in 1995, when he had a client that was complaining that his website was nowhere to be found in the search engines. At this time, SEO was little more than a thought. There were no handy-dandy tools, no SEO forums, and no guides to help in the matter of exposure online. So what did Danny do? He decided to research what it takes for a search engine to decide to rank sites higher. He modified, tracked, and re modified his sites so as to determine what changes had what effects. After a long period of time, and a large amount of answers, Danny posted his information online, and it soon became the very first «A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines.» There had been nothing of this information beforehand, and this may have indeed jump started this whole industry. While checking out the pictures from this year’s Google Dance, his appeared and my daughter asked «Daddy, who is that guy.» To which I answered, «he is the guy that made Daddy’s job possible.» With so much acclaim and even more e-mail incentive from grateful website designers, Danny maintained the information online for the world to partake. As time passed, he dug deeper to find what it takes to index sites, increase ranking, increase traffic, and how the search engines work overall.

In 1997, Danny launched what is now arguably the most important SEO information site online, Search Engine Watch. It contained his «A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines,» and so much more. SEW has changed ownership (as many great things in business do) but is still maintained and edited by Danny Sullivan himself. Years later, this site is one of the very first that I visit every single, and throughout my day. There are very few times that I can stumble onto a question that is not answered here.

Matt Cutts

Matt Cutts began his employment with Google in 2000, where he worked as a software engineer, and ended up creating Google’s SafeSearch (Google’s family filter). He deals primarily with issues of quality (as in spammers) and webmaster concerns (like the algorithm concerning ranking and penalization). Matt names wasn’t nearly as famous (or infamous depending on your perspective) until he started his blog. Using his blog, Matt talks SEO, Google’s products, life at Google, and a lot of overall nerdy stuff. When his pic came up on my computer, and my daughter asked of him, I replied, «that’s the son of B**** that makes Daddy’s job really hard.» With respect of course.

*Little more is known of Matt because he works for the NSA under the guise of a Google employee, so he can read and distribute all of your emails to the government.* *I am totally kidding. Being in the spotlight carries a lot of responsibilities and burdens, one of which is dealing with petty rumors and crass people. There is a site (that I am not going to justify with naming here) that claims my joke, sorta, in a very sorry attempt to degrade Google’s integrity. Matt did indeed work for the Department of Defense while going to school for his M. S. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. That plus the B. S. degrees from the University of Kentucky in both mathematics and computer science, means he’s a really smart guy. He worked for the DoD as an elective, providing a few months of study, and then a few in the work environment. Think about it though, even if the rumors are true, and the government used Matt to get your Gmails and read through them, do you really think that’s the worst thing our government has done? Probably not. Matt is widely noted as an extremely nice and approachable guy. Many Google employees will openly admit that they hate waling the floors of seminars and conventions with a Google badge on, as they soon become the target for angry webmasters. Matt easily gets the most of this activity, and returns it with a smile.

I will likely be doing an on-going posting on some other big names in marketing and the Internet industry. I believe that it is a very good idea to know the people you work with, even if not directly.

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