About Leona Griffin

I originally started my own business in November 1997 called Harvey Business Services; where I provided web design services.  Similar to other web designers in that time, my clients had websites but no real traffic or visitors to speak of.  Setting out to learn how I could help my customers draw traffic to their sites, I began learning about search engine optimization, banner advertisements and other forms of internet marketing. 

When I first started learning SEO there was a rather fast learning curve; if you made changes to your website and submitted them to Yahoo and MSN (Google wasn't around at that time) then you could actually see your results at about 12:01 a.m.  I began working on things all day, staying up to submit them and see what the results were and documenting them.  Soon after this I was able to gain top rankings within the major search engines with ease; its important to note that the search engines were not utilizing artificial intelligence at that time.

 I then began to work on other internet marketing skills, and soon after landing my first email marketing campaign.  I worked with 2wire Incorporated to drive traffic to their DSL lookup service, allowing visitors to use their site and determine if DSL was available in their area.  Throughout the campaign  I was able to successfully achieve a 16% click through rate and a 21% conversion.

As I continued to progress, I began learning about pay per click campaigns.  I had various clients who's campaigns I oversaw.  This was a great opportunity for me to increase my knowledge on both PPC and analytics.

I worked for various marketing agencies who had an extreme interest in adding search engine optimization to their existing marketing services, however they did not with to have a technician in-house.  This worked out quite well for me, I was able to service various clients throughout the country and increase my skills and knowledge in the industry.  I worked for companies such as:

• WeDirect

• SEOInto

• 1st on the List Promotion Inc.

In about 2003 I had the opportunity to work with Lauren Elliott, the original software engineer and creator of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego".  I was working with him to promote various internet sites via search engine optimization. He had an extremely popular website at that time, called Sodamail.com.  Sodamail offered daily newsletters to families an various topics.

Lauren went on to start PNN.com, The Personal News Network, where visitors can become online journalists and create content and put it up online.  I did some consulting for Lauren to ensure that the website was structurally search engine friendly and provided insight on how to increase the benefits of monetization through ad revenue programs such as Google Adsense and other contextual advertising networks.

As much as I enjoyed my business, I decided that I needed exposure to a large amount of clients to work on troubleshooting websites, learn about the problems sites faced with shopping carts, content management systems and utilizing all of my various strengths within search marketing.  I decided to take a full time job at eTrafficJams.com as an SEO Technician in June 2006.

Wanting to further my education, I flew to California in October of 2006 to attend Bruce Clay's SEO Training Course, as well as the Advanced Certification Course.  It was a great opportunity for me to learn a different aspect of search engine optimization and highly recommend these courses to any SEO looking to increase their knowledge.  It was here where I really honed in on identifying server related website issues and the understanding of LSI and Google's artificial intelligence used within their index algorithms.

When working at eTrafficjams.com, I was exposed to various websites with serious problems that were causing them to not rank within Google.  I began working with these sites, assessing them, analyzing them, determining the problem, correcting it and monitoring it. Within the first year I successfully analyzed 123 websites.  After my first year I was promoted to SR. SEO Analyst.

As the Sr. SEO Analyst, I was able to work directly with the owner Michael Pedone.  (Click here to review the recommendation I received from Michael Pedone at Linkedin.com!)

eTrafficJams.com was later acquired by Getupdated Internet Marketing, an international marketing company based out of Stockholm, Sweden.  In February of 2008 I attended a company kickoff in Sweden, where I was recognized as the best Search Engine Optimization Specialist within the company.

Upon returning from Sweden I began preparing to attend the Search Engine Strategies in New York.  GetUpdated was the largest sponsor at the conference as well as an exhibitor on the 3rd floor.  I had a great opportunity to work with James Welch from JustSearch in the UK, also another Getupdated company.  James is an expert in search engine optimization and he spoke at SES New York about Widgets & Gadgets.  (Click here to review the recommendation provided by James Welch!)We provided a website analysis to visitors allowing them to understand their competitors and what they would need in order to attain top ten rankings for specific keywords they were interested in.

In April of 2008 I resigned from Getupdated (formally eTrafficJams.com). I have now started LeonaGriffin.com for the sole purpose of putting to use the 10 years of knowledge I have obtained and putting it to work to promote my clients sites.

E-mail: info@LeonaGriffin.com