Tony Adam got a taste of search by migrating to a variety of roles within Fame 1 Computers, Inc. (February 2002 to October 2005), a computer hardware and sales distributor in Los Angeles. His roles included: consulting, sales, infrastructure, network implementation, web design, and development. Tony says he helped Fame 1 Computers grow their consulting division and then they needed a web presence. He stepped into an SEO role in the process.
Tony explains that he was in college at the time working on his degree in computer science and started coding the website, sometimes with help of hired consultants, to be an e-distributor of wholesale computer parts. Over fifty thousand computer part prices were updated each morning, tying their database from the distributor to their website. As a result, Tony focused on trying to obtain ranking for various computer products to support the company leasing program. As he concentrated on drawing traffic to his company’s website, he stumbled upon a couple WebmasterWorld posts that caught his attention. He started reading and participating in the discussions learning from what was shared on the WebmasterWorld website. Soon Tony was attending PubCon (first time in 2004) and realized how personable the industry was and from that time forward had caught the SEO bug.
Tony worked for a time at NBC Universal before deciding to get into SEO full time. After working on smaller projects, Tony went to PayPal in 2007. Tony met up with Laura Lippay, at SMX Advanced, who told Tony of an opportunity at Yahoo! where she worked, and soon he was hired. Today (since July 2008), Tony is the SEO Manager at Yahoo! and maintains an informative SEO blog.