10 Influential SEO’s of All Time: How They Get Involved in SEO?

Aaron Wall is One of the most visible SEO pundits on the web is unquestionably, Aaron Wall. Aaron is a very unique individual in the SEO world since he is exceptionally knowledgeable and networked but until recently, has not overtly offered search engine optimization consulting services.

How Aaron Started SEO : He created a site that did not deserve to rank because it was garbage. Almost immediately after he created it and he wanted it to rank so people would see it. It was a bit easier to rank back then. He also took down search related notes on a site and when hr did not yet realize he was selling a service someone contacted him and wanted him to work for them.

Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant specializing in search engine marketing, online reputation management, and business blogging. Considered one of the world’s most respected online marketing experts, Andy has worked with many top companies such as Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS, Lowes, Quicken Loans, and NBC.

How Andy Started SEO : He mostly just fell into search marketing. Before he moved to the U.S., he worked as a paralegal, financial planner and mortgage broker. However, he has always had a passion for computers and have technically been online since 1987 ‚ “the pre-WWW days” ‚ so, when he moved here, he decided that it will be a good time to make his hobby a career.

Bill Slawski Bill is one of the well known SEO’s, he has a blog called SEO by the Sea. His writing can best be described as thorough and honest. Bill often digs deep into patents and other things that most would find too difficult to grasp.

How Bill Get Into SEO: Two of his friends got him into SEO, though they didn’t know it at the time. One had left a job he was unhappy with and was searching for something else to do. Another was practicing law, and had an empty office in a building he was renting. Bill suggested him that they get together and start a business acting as a registered agent for Delaware corporations, and helping people to incorporate in Delaware. They talked about it, and decided that it was a good idea.

Bill grabbed a book on how to learn html in 2 weeks, and created a site for them. Bill had learned a lot about web site promotion. One of the two has a sister who was working for Digital Corp in the early days, selling micro-computers. She sent us an email telling us to take a look at a new site that they had just developed, by the name of Altavista. While Bill had done a fair amount of content development and link building at that point, submitting the site to Altavista may have been the first time He acted as an SEO.

Brett Tabke is an American programmer and SEO professional. He is the founder of WebmasterWorld. Tabke started working with computers at a young age, developing software for Commodore home computers. He then worked for companies like Epyx and Berkeley Softworks (later renamed to GeoWorks, and makers of the GEOS operating system). In 1984 Tabke started his first BBS using a 300 baud modem on a dialup line. In 1996 he made the transition to internet and web technologies.

How Bret Started SEO : Brett put the first BBS online in 1984. From there he picked up building websites and also learned about online traffic. It did not take much time for Brett to be the authority on internet traffic. About search engine marketing Brett explains, “Search Engine Marketing is just a fancy name for checkbook SEO. That’s not what I deal with - it is optimization and promotion I am concerned with.”

Danny Sullivan widely considered a leading “search engine guru,” he has been helping webmasters, marketers and everyday web users understand how search engines work for over a decade. Danny’s expertise about search engines is often sought by the media, and he has been quoted in places like The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker and Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline.

How Danny Get Involved in SEO : Danny began covering search engines in late 1995, when he undertook a study of how they indexed web pages. The results were published online as “A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines,” a pioneering effort to answer the many questions site designers and Internet publicists had about search engines.

The positive reaction from both marketers and general search engine users caused Danny to expand the guide into Search Engine Watch, where he served as editor-in-chief through November 2006. Now he heads up Search Engine Land as editor-in-chief, taking it into the next generation of search coverage. Danny also serves as Third Door Media’s chief content officer.

Daron Babin is the person behind WebMasterRadio.FM. There are many success stories on the web and one of the most interesting is WebmasterRadio.FM. The brainchild of Old, Old School SEO Daron Babin and his partner Brandy Shapiro, WebmasterRadio.FM has become the “go to” resource for live streaming radio and podcasts on all things related to search and interactive marketing.

How Daron Get into SEO : Daron created a website back in ‘96 with a partner who knew how to create a website and server management. His friend knew nothing of marketing, so that was Daron’s side of the deal. He dove into the web head first and realized that there had to be a way to get to the top of the search engines and that was what he used to navigate the web. So it just made sense. Daron began reading SearchEngineWatch, Jimworld, Planet Ocean, and SearchEngineForums where he became a moderator with guys like Mikkel, Keith Peterson, Mike Mackin and many others. He cut his teeth with some of the best SEO’s who are read about today as if they are old legends Dogboy, Bob Massa, GoSixtyGuy and so many more.

Jim Boykin, CEO of the very much respected US based seo, link-building and internet marketing company, We Build Pages. We Build Pages SEO and link building tools have been taken offline and included in the program along with many of the private WBP tools.

How Jim Started SEO : In 1999 he got into search about 2 weeks after he has been online, he has just published WeBuildPages.com and someone in Atlanta GA (I’m NY) called and asked him to design a website. Jim asked how she found him and she said she searched AltaVista for “build web pages” and by luck, he was somewhere there. From that day on, Jim was all about search engines and trying to figure out how to rank at the top in them.

Matt Cutts joined Google as a Software Engineer in January 2000. Before Google, he was working on his Ph.D. in computer graphics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has an M.S. from UNC-Chapel Hill, and B.S. degrees in both mathematics and computer science from the University of Kentucky.

Matt wrote SafeSearch, which is Google’s family filter. In addition to his experience at Google, Matt held a top-secret clearance while working for the Department of Defense, and he’s also worked at a game engine company. He claims that Google is the most fun by far.

How Matt Involved in SEO : Matt got into search in 1999. He was working on his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The computer science department there makes him take two outside classes, so Matt took classes from the Information and Library Science department about search engines. It turned out that search engines were really exciting stuff: term frequency times inverse document frequency and all that stuff. During the whole class, he found himself scribbling fun ideas to try in the margins of his notes.

Philipp Lenssen is an all around kind of guy. How many people do you know who are thinkers, bloggers, designers, coders, musicians, artists and writers all in one? To get a quick rundown of this mans skills checkout his Outer Court which is just one of his very cool websites. Most of us know him from Blogoscoped which he claims is 80% focused on Google.

How Philipp Involved in SEO : In his “job life”, he has always been a programmer, even while maintaining his blog. Outer-court.com was just a domain name to host his first “homepage”. He started out at (gasp) Geocities in 1997, then moved to Tripod, and a bunch of other free homepage providers. Finally I got so annoyed by them introducing ads and popups, so he got his own server.

That was in around May 2003, while staying in Malaysia. Philipp was reading Elwyn Jenkins’ Google Village blog at that time and greatly enjoyed it, but it didn’t have enough daily stuff to satisfy his information hunger, so to speak, so he created just the blog he was looking for to read at the time.

Rand Fishkin runs one of the most authoritative SEO blogs across the Internet, SEOMoz. He is a popular speaker at search engine optimization conferences – not so much for his trademark yellow sneakers – but for his direct and uncompromising advocacy of social media marketing.

How Rand Get Involved in SEO : As folks may know from that Newsweek article, He work with his Mom (Gillian). Rand actually joined her company in 1997 and over time, it became a different firm. They got into webdev in the ’90s and then usability and were working with an SEO firm who simply wasn’t doing a good job. They never even mentioned to us the concept of link popularity!

To make a long story short, they started doing it themselves and have barely looked back. As far as the SEO community, he got an invite to SES NYC from Danny last year, accepted and have been getting more and more involved in the SEO/M community ever since. He really like going to the conferences, blogging, following the forums - it’s become a second job for him. He owe an absurd debt of gratitude to so many people in this industry. He is humbled with every link and every mention - it’s been incredibly rewarding working in this industry - not just monetarily.