The Father of SEO
Five months ago I had the opportunity to speak at the B2B Marketing Expo in Los Angeles, CA on Search Engine Optimization. Upon arriving it was to my surprise that the state I’d be speaking on was only feet away from Bruce Clay.
For me, this was kinda exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. The exciting part was that I would be soon giving a presentation on a stage parallel to his. On the flip side, it was kinda like me giving a lecture on the theory of relativity with Albert Einstein an ears shot away.
Before I started my talk on SEO, I walked over to Bruce Clay with a colleague of mine to introduce myself and let him know that he indirectly played a huge role in my career.
In the early 2000s, I was building websites and putting forth the effort to drop corporate America and jump into entrepreneurship. I had a pretty nice entertainment website that was getting some decent traffic but I needed more if I was going to be able to sell advertising and make enough to drop ship from corporate life. That’s when I knew I needed this ‘SEO’ thing. That’s when I contacted Bruce Clay, Inc. Back then, I was making around $2,800/mo and all I can remember is the SEO fee I was quoted (and I’m sure it was well worth it) would have taken up every dollar I had to my name — this is when I decided to try and figure out this SEO thing. Before long, I was addicted and getting really good at getting websites ranked, and fast.
Fast forward back to the B2B Marketing Expo some 18+ years later, I got to meet the guy ‘Father of SEO‘ I’ve followed so closely (not in a weird way) for so many years. It was kinda like a kid meeting his favorite NFL star.
Long story short, The Father of SEO, Bruce Lay was super nice, humble and great to chat with for the short amount of time we had.