When I started my consulting business, I imagined that I would be working with some larger firms with in-house web and marketing resources. I imagined that much like it had been for me as an in-house marketer, I would apply my SEO/SEM skills to a given situation and others would carry out the recommendations.

While it does work that way some of the time, I frequently work with small companies that have little or no marketing and/or technical expertise. It is unlikely they know or have anyone who knows what an <H1> tag is, or how to create an .htacess file.

I had one customer whose shared-hosting provider experienced frequent outages, sometimes several hours a week and another whose canned shopping cart was broken by a system-wide upgrade and was unable to process orders for months.

The long and short of this is that while my focus is SEO and SEM services, I frequently provide additional marketing services through relationships with local designers, programmers, and copywriters. Some of these folks I know from my days as an in-house marketer, others I have come to know and respect through clients projects.

I enjoy the challenges brought by different types of businesses and the opportunity to make a difference.

How about you, any stories you can share?

My name is John Allen and I am an internet marketing professional located in Huntsville, AL. I have worked for a wide range of companies and get routine questions from people looking for tips on SEO and SEM. If you are trying to get a website launched, you are welcome to post a question here and I will do my best to answer it. My goal is to chronicle the discussions so a larger audience can benefit from the answers.