About Chris Bennett
I am the President and Founder of 97th Floor and I have been involved with the Internet since the days of Alta Vistas reign (the good ol days when you could change your meta tags, submit your site through Inktomi and see your rankings improve by dinner). I got into SEO from a Graphic Design background, that is what I was majoring in in school when I started my first online business with some buddies. I came on to help with offline marketing and design and started to notice that when we did certain things to the pages of our site we would see more traffic. I quickly became addicted to SEO and after that business, I started to work as an SEO and overall Web Strategy Consulting for clients. Since then I have seen the rewards of high search engine rankings and really don’t know how to do anything business oriented without thinking about how to leverage it online.I have been privileged enough to work closely with large companies such as Omniture, Henry Schein and The Polynesian Cultural Center. I have spoken at many SEO conferences and seminars including a yearly seminar we put on in Hawaii that has been a lot of fun for us to do. I have personally worked on or advised nearly a thousand sites, which has helped me think outside the box and find a way to leverage anything from drop shipping, to catering, to one of the fastest growing software companies on the planet.
My best advice for someone starting out is to just get the site up and live, and then start small by picking a less competitive keyword to start and test, test, test. That way once you rank for the smaller word you will enjoy small victories and it will carry you until you are dominating your industry. I believe that if a company is not online in 5 years they will not exist, everyone should be thinking about adapting to the Internet. I believe the future of SEO is in branding and doing things differently, which may include adopting a social media campaign or ranking for every spot in Google for your branded terms and employee names or buying smaller sites and ranking them for the same keywords to give you multiple positions for the same term. Also if you are not doing something to build a community online you will be past up by a competitor that is. Whether it is through blogging, user generated content or a profiles and member based site you need to be building a community. Community is the new commodity.
I am originally from Vista California, that is where I grew up and lived until I got married. I have also lived in Newport Beach and Bellevue WA. I currently live in Utah with my beautiful wife and twin boys. If I am not glued to my laptop I am probably riding my atv’s, watching reruns of Arrested Development, wake surfing or trying to get back to California to paddle out with some buddies.
Interviews:
Omniture Webinar - 30 SEO Strategies for Corporate Websites
Webmaster Radio - SMX West Interview
Mashable Conversations - Launch of BLVD Status
Elance - 13 Ways to Make Your Blog Go Viral
Please feel free to contact me at:
chris [at] 97thfloor [dot] com
-or through Social Avenues-
http://www.linkedin.com/in/97thfloor/
Twitter.com/chrisbennett
StumbleUpon
Digg
SeoMoz Marketplace
-Other Projects-
5ones - Action Sports Blog
BLVD Status - Live Stats Analytics Tool
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been wake surfing all morning, so much fun