My name is Gabriel Goldenberg and SEO ROI Services is my SEO company. Read on for company information. Click “Gab Goldenberg” for information about me.
My start in SEO
I got into SEO by accident. I grew up in a family where politics were always discussed around the breakfast table with the morning paper, or during family dinners. So it was only natural that, when I turned 18, I wanted to impact the federal election.
So I created a blog to promote my opinions. I read up on internet marketing and applied what I learned to my blog. I ranked for my keywords within 4 months and was hooked from then on.
Starting to take SEO seriously
With the passing of time, I began working on other people’s sites and gained notoriety. Here’s a short list of some highlights along the way, in roughly chronological order:
- I ranked the Hotel de Paris, a Montreal hotel, for a number of short-tail and medium-tail terms and tripled year-over-year online sales in the process.
- Microsoft offered me a position on its SEM team.
- I ranked a product site of LaughingBird Software within 2 months of getting them their first link.
- First big speaking engagement: I spoke at SMX West. February 2008.
- Matt Cutts of Google recognized me as the second person to notice a new form of crawling. It feels good when Google staff calls you a leader :).
- My big press break: La Presse, Montreal’s biggest French-language daily newspaper, profiled Emile Girard and me in a story on young entrepreneurs (PDF, opens in new tab).
- I signed up Ice.com, a member of the Internet Retailer 500 list of largest online stores, as a client. This was also a great learning opportunity, as I learned to use some enterprise marketing software.
- I wrote the first advanced SEO book
My current business
Since then, things have only gotten better.
I have
– Spoken a fair bit: at SMX Advanced 2008 and 2009, SMX West 2009, and Affiliate Summit East 2009. And I had to decline to speak at SMX East, Pubcon Las Vegas and Affiliate Convention.
– Gotten job offers, from both local Canadian competitors as well as from well known American SEO companies like Jim Boykin’s We Build Pages.
– Continued to do client work when I think it will be fun and lucrative. Currently that either means doing SEO consultations with small-medium businesses to answer their questions, or buying / building links. I’m open to projects where I will learn something new.
– Written for numerous publications:
- Search Engine Journal
- Search Engine Land
- Michael Gray’s Wolf Howl
- SEOmoz
- Website Magazine
- Electronic Retailer Magazine
- Online Strategies Magazine
– Been seen in the press, including some nice interviews:
- In text for About.com
- On tape for Web Pro News about buying websites
- In front of SEOmoz’s camera
My client list includes:
- lesser known outfits like the Government of Canada,
- ecommerce outfits like Ice.com and web analytics company Conversion Ruler,
- mom and pop shops