Australia's #1st (ever!) SEO guru; an early Internet adopter that started his SEO plight in the mid-1990's, just before the Y2K Bug had it's chance to chew-up the whole world's electronic data in just one foul swoop, or so we were led to believe... 

John sprouted organically in Sydney's local fringe whilst tapping into the CBD's electro-data hub with the aid of short-range 100 meter to 2km uni-directional wireless antennas & transceivers (we preferred to call this long-range wireless satellite navigation) which enabled us to connect our funky computer office to the closest Telecom (aka Telstra) Exchange building. This not only allowed us to throw away many kilometers of phone cables, it also granted us the fastest transfer speeds of data possible when accessing society's new found yet still quite underground (at the time) trend, the Internet! (not Interwebs! not now or ever!). 

A few years later, early 1999, John discovered a quirkiness passion, spruiking words of "Google" and "Optimizing your Website" on the street and to the masses, only to be faced with rebellion & bland replies like: "What's Google?"; "Can you make me a website?"; and, "I think my Advertising agency handles this; they just show me new ideas that I pick from; I don't actually do anything hands-on {I asked myself, "what on earth are these people doing for this company" and why on earth would they get given a [Marketing] badge?"} 

Now for my First-person narrative:

Having completed high school at a selective high school and mostly disenchanted about my career path, I reluctantly agreed to step-up from the Secondary to the Tertiary bandwagon of studies. 

From 1992 to 1997 I entertained the concept of Degrees & Diplomas in Science (Psychology & Philosophy); Marketing Management and Advertising. During this time, I managed to (luckily) stay away & disconnected from the adverse-to-change Computer Science faculties. It was obvious that any engaging in any new computer module/course would result in expiring prior to completion, hence, a waste of time. The teachers just couldn't keep up, not possible. So I decided that the best & more convenient way for me to learn was to spend any free time I had at University, Corporate & Government computer facilities quickly soaking up & mastering as much software as I could seeing that the number & variety of Free software programs that were being released between 1994 and 1998 was growing exponentially thanks to the accelerating speed of the Internet. 

In 1998, I had a chance to reconnect with some old Sydney friends, now sophisticated IT geeks to me, and took it! (These were the same people who were running, operating & managing University campus' computer rooms, data servers, intranets & extranets). This was my first "real" introduction to mainstream Internet languages & programming. Before that it was all the free website builders I could find on the Internet, template-based visual editing, much like using a very early version of Microsoft Word. So now you know a little more about how I came to own www.SEO.com.au in 1999 and how long I have been practicing the commercial art of SEO.

John Bolakis is following