The very first post I want to make in my blog is something personal that I would like to share with you.

When I started my SEO career, I was practically put in front of a PC and I was told to “start optimizing the site”. ok, what does this mean? I had this huge ecommerce site, with no notions at all if not a beginner’s guide by SEOmoz guys. That was my first reading about SEO to understand better what I have to do.

Luckily, I am using Twitter a lot, and so I decided to search for amazing SEO guys, to follow, read and learn what they were sharing. Twitter is a fantastic tool to connect with people in an active way, and with all my ignorance on this matter, I started to reply to someone asking for something I didn’t know yet and day after day I was learning a lot of things, that even a book can’t teach.

Beside SEOmoz, another company I discovered was Distilled. I did not know a thing not only about SEO, but even about online marketing in general, so I was not aware of company doing a lot of things like SEO, PPC and all this kind of things. I was really impressed by Distilled because I first like the site a lot, and then because people working there were all active twitter user, sharing amazing things, in a simple way (even I was able to understand). So I started to follow all of them, both in twitter and in google+, and thanks to them I was able to learn a lot of things (beside the obvious ones).

In November 2011, I decided to go to New York City for 2 weeks vacation. Since my philosophy is “try or you’ll never know”, I sent an email to Tom Critchlow, head of search marketing in Distilled NY, asking if it was possible to meet some of the Distilled guys and see their office.

After few minutes, an email arrived stating “Distilled NYC meets Alessio”. BUM! It changed my day. After that , I was in contact with Stephanie Chang, SEO analyst, who was really kind to say she was really happy to meet me once I arrived in NYC.

So the day arrived. I went to Distilled office based in Techspace NYU Union Square where I met Stephane, Tom and Julianne Staino (John Doherty and Ron Garrett were busy outside NY).  I was really excited , and shy too, because I was talking with some of the guys who are virtually teaching all I know about SEO. They were extremely kind, we talked for some time about NY and SEO in Berlin, and then I left, since I didn’t want to bother them too much (I can barely imagine how many things they have to do).

So I went out on the 11th Street, and I was totally in another world. I know, it seems exaggerated but to me it was amazing to meet who I follow every day through every post via twitter and via their blogs.

It was a really nice experience, and that’s why I keep trying, because you’ll never know.