When I started working for this company the previous web master had passed away about eighteen months earlier.  The loss of a colleague was compounded by the fact that while the company was in mourning Google had done an update to their algorithm called Panda that focused on certain techniques that they had invested heavily in. Over night these techniques became known as black hat and Google was sending warnings to them giving them the opportunity to clean up their SEO practices before suspension. Problem was, there was no web master and no one was monitoring that email.  Finally Google suspended their two flagship websites.  I was told that they would have several leads come in over the night every night and one day it just dried up.  You couldn’t find them twenty pages deep.

This sent them on an investigation and they learned about the suspension and set about finding a new web master.  I was interviewed for the position but they decided to go another way.  Actually more than once before I was finally called back.   Once hired I set about doing a long and laborious task of dealing with over 14,000 links for the first site and over 9,000 links for second.  All of this had to be verified and executed.  After 6 weeks of work I submitted the report and within weeks we began to see the sites slowly start to climb again.

It was then that we undertook completely rebuilding their all their websites in the CMS WordPress.  I was the sole person in their web/IT department and did all the SEO work when these sites were built.  This included developing in almost 300 product spreadsheet including product photography.  When we launched the new sites it bolstered the rankings even more till you see how they are at the time of this writing.  #1 on Google with their other sites on the front page as well dominating the front page of Google for several of their keywords.

While with this company I took on many major roles.  Not just a webmaster and SEO Manager but an IT department as well.  Upgrading all the systems from XP for over 50 admin and sales staff, modernizing the mail services improving service and saving money, upgraded hosting again saving money and improving service and even installed commercial wi-fi network hardware to serve Internet to 2 buildings on campus saving over $3,000.00 a year on Internet services.  The list is long.

Unfortunately, this was my first lesson in business owners and their lack of understanding of my work.  My departure came the day after the entire list of SEO projects was completed.  That explains the drop when I left.  But then they then hired a major marketing firm costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars that broke them into many areas that only investment can take you.  Radio, TV ad and even sponsors of a reality TV series.  As you can see, that kind of investment pays off.  They dominate their market now.  It took me to get them out of the doghouse with Google.